Word: rjr
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...RJR deal also raises the salary competition among executives to absurd levels. Says John Swearingen, former chairman of Standard Oil of Indiana: "There is a limit to what managers ought to be paid for managing other people's money." Adds a top executive involved in a current takeover: "The yardstick for compensation has just gotten twelve inches longer. The chief executive who's doing a first-class job running a major U.S. corporation for $890,000 a year is going to start thinking he's some kind of a fool...
...fight for RJR Nabisco, that seems to have happened in spectacular fashion. No matter how the battle turns out, the unseemly scramble for riches has, for the moment at least, given overreaching a bad name. In the end, the RJR brouhaha may turn out to be a useful testing of the limits: of greed, of debt, of dealmaking. The resulting outcry may prove an effective regulating device. "In its own way, the deal has been typically American, where nothing is in moderation, including the enormous selfishness of management," notes James Bere, chairman of Borg-Warner. "It's touched a nerve...
...exclusive interview with chief executive officer of RJR Nabisco, Ross Johnson, accompanies the main story. Senior correspondent Frederick Ungeheuer and his wife were about to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with 20 friends in Roxbury, Conn., when he received word that Johnson, who has refused all public comment since launching his takeover bid in mid-October, was ready to talk. Ungeheuer left immediately for Jupiter, Fla., where Johnson was spending a holiday away from the fray, for a one-hour talk about the megadeal. Ungeheuer has met other big dealmakers in his 25 years of covering business for TIME...
ROSS JOHNSON. A native of Canada, the RJR Nabisco president, 56, has always risen to the top. In 1985, as head of Nabisco Brands, he advocated the merger between that company and RJR Reynolds. Just three years later, as head of RJR, Johnson apparently changed his mind. In October he and a group of top managers offered shareholders $17.6 billion to take the company private, a price they later increased to $22.7 billion...
HENRY KRAVIS. With his reputation as the No. 1 leveraged-buyout specialist on the line, he was not about to let RJR Nabisco go private unless he consummated the deal. A founding partner in the buyout firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the Manhattan socialite, 44, countered Johnson's proposal by offering to pay as much as $21.6 billion for the Atlanta-based company. As RJR's new owner, Kravis, whose firm also controls Beatrice and Safeway Stores, would probably keep the food divisions and sell the tobacco business...