Author: Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
I re-lived the the high drama that surrounded the Leveraged Buyout (LBO) of RJR Nabisco 25 years ago. The authors have done a phenomenal job in researching all of the characters involved and lay it out in excruciating detail. Whenever they introduced a new company or major character they went back several generations to lay the foundation for the story. This made the book rather long (500 pages) and towards the end, I was eager to see it through. The cast of characters is like a Who’s Who of Wall Street circa 1988 and many of the people like Ted Forstmann, Henry Kravis, Louis Gerstner, went on to achieve much greatness in the years to come.
Ross Johnson is the happy-go-lucky CEO of RJR Nabisco, is convinced that his company’s shares are grossly undervalued. He tries several different things to move the share price up, but none of them seem to work. Finally, he decides the best way for him to raise share-holder value is to make an offer for RJR Nabisco through an LBO at what he believed was the highest possible price. One of the first things I learnt when I attended an auction is that once you bid on something, the whole world wants a piece of it. RJR Nabisco was no different and pretty much all of Wall Street was in some way, shape or form involved in a bid for the company. What follows is high-stakes drama that has a nail-biting finish that I won’t reveal here. Read the book and you will have a better appreciation for some of the behind the scenes action in a major M&A story.
I re-lived the the high drama that surrounded the Leveraged Buyout (LBO) of RJR Nabisco 25 years ago. The authors have done a phenomenal job in researching all of the characters involved and lay it out in excruciating detail. Whenever they introduced a new company or major character they went back several generations to lay the foundation for the story. This made the book rather long (500 pages) and towards the end, I was eager to see it through. The cast of characters is like a Who’s Who of Wall Street circa 1988 and many of the people like Ted Forstmann, Henry Kravis, Louis Gerstner, went on to achieve much greatness in the years to come.
Ross Johnson is the happy-go-lucky CEO of RJR Nabisco, is convinced that his company’s shares are grossly undervalued. He tries several different things to move the share price up, but none of them seem to work. Finally, he decides the best way for him to raise share-holder value is to make an offer for RJR Nabisco through an LBO at what he believed was the highest possible price. One of the first things I learnt when I attended an auction is that once you bid on something, the whole world wants a piece of it. RJR Nabisco was no different and pretty much all of Wall Street was in some way, shape or form involved in a bid for the company. What follows is high-stakes drama that has a nail-biting finish that I won’t reveal here. Read the book and you will have a better appreciation for some of the behind the scenes action in a major M&A story.
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