Word: tobacco
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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They need not have worried: the deals are back -- and bigger and bolder than ever. Last week top executives at RJR Nabisco stunned Wall Street by proposing what would be the biggest takeover in U.S. history: a $17.6 billion leveraged buyout by management of the tobacco and food conglomerate. (Among its top brands: Winston cigarettes, Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers and Life Savers candy.) The RJR executives, with the help of the Shearson Lehman Hutton investment firm, hope to borrow close to $16 billion to finance the deal. If the transaction is completed, it would eclipse Chevron's $13.3 billion acquisition...
Philip Morris hopes that its play for Kraft will prove to be pre-emptive -- so attractive that Kraft management will be unable to turn it down. The tobacco and food giant is proposing to buy Kraft for $90 a share in cash, a 50% premium over the $60 price of Kraft stock before the offer. To get a friendly match and outbid other possible suitors, Philip Morris may have to raise its bid to more than $100, according to Wall Street analysts. Says Hamish Maxwell, the Philip Morris chairman: "We're prepared to negotiate this deal...
...White Sox and three in Oakland, La Russa has grown increasingly sensitive to the nagging charge of being an attorney-at-law. Branch Rickey and Miller Huggins were good baseball men and members of the bar, but the A's skipper has had trouble finding comfortable acceptance among his tobacco-splattered peers. In his THE BALLET SCHOOL T shirt, under his NO CIGAR SMOKING PLEASE sign, La Russa sometimes yearns to be a little more like Lasorda, who sometimes yearns to be a little less like Lou Costello. One playing chess and the other checkers: it could be a surprising...
...question of hypocrisy in holding tobacco stocks comes up when one considers that numerous researchers and professors at the Medical School and School of Public Health have not only come out against smoking but continue to research the health hazards it causes and search for cures. Harvard even has an American Cancer Society professorship, funded by an organization that spends a great deal of time convincing others not to smoke...
...University's past record on stockholder activism should not stop us from encouraging Harvard to take action against the tobacco companies. In keeping with its stated investment policy, Harvard first should negotiate with the companies as a preferred stockholder, urging them to change their practices and threatening divestment if the companies resist. Universities, such as Harvard, which aspire to inculcating a sense of ethics in their students, must back up their words with actions...