Word: rjr
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Ross Johnson had suspected he was heading for a fall. "They are not going to approve our bid," the RJR Nabisco president told TIME in an interview five days before his board of directors decided the giant company's fate. His foreboding was on target. On the night of Nov. 30, some 30 sleepless hours after the official bidding deadline had passed, the RJR directors named the winner in the biggest takeover wrangle in history. It was not the company's , president...
...Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the leveraged-buyout specialists. Underdog KKR won even though the firm's final bid of about $25 billion in cash and securities, or $109 a share, was a bit less than the $25.4 billion, or $112 a share, that Johnson and his handful of top RJR managers had offered as their last stab. (The largest previous deal was Chevron's $13.3 billion takeover of Gulf in 1984.) "It was destined to happen this way," said a source close to the bidding. "The board could not appear to favor management in a buyout." Members of the losing side...
...PRITZKER. The publicity-shy chairman of the Hyatt Corp., Pritzker, 66, with his brother Robert, 62, surprised both Kravis and Johnson by joining the First Boston investment firm in an informal last-minute bid for RJR Nabisco valued at as much as $27 billion. Allied with the Pritzkers is Philip Anschutz of Denver, a billionaire oil and mining magnate. They have since combined forces with an acknowledged master of the hostile game, HARRY GRAY, 69, the taciturn former chairman of United Technologies, who heads his own investment firm. The First Boston group is offering a highly complex package of cash...
...size of the deal and the fortunes to be made appear to exceed any foreseeable benefits to U. S. industry. Seldom has corporate behavior seemed so questionable. -- An interview with RJR President Ross Johnson, who started the scramble. See BUSINESS...
COVER: The brawl for RJR Nabisco tests the limits of greed and American capitalism...