Barbarians At the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough & John Helyar

Author:Bryan Burrough & John Helyar [Burrough, Bryan & Helyar, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-03-01T04:13:49+00:00

An hour after Kravis lofted his $125 million offer, Dick Beattie was on the phone to Bob Millard at Shearson.

“Have you heard about our offer?” Beattie wondered.

Millard passed on the news Beattie expected. Cohen, the trader said, was bouncing off the walls at Kravis’s offer. He was insulted; he was outraged; he had never seen anything like it.

“He’s calling it a bribe,” Millard said.

“I knew it,” Beattie said with a sigh.

Johnson returned to his forty-eighth-floor offices to find Cohen in a rage at the Kravis offer. Hill soon joined him. As he stomped about cursing Kravis, Tom Hill’s face turned so red Johnson thought he was going to have a heart attack. Jim Robinson was also there.

For all the sound and fury, the Kravis offer brought into the open the unacknowledged rift between Shearson and Johnson, which had now lasted nearly two days, since Kravis’s announcement the previous morning. Johnson still hadn’t openly reaffirmed his commitment to go ahead with the Shearson offer. Robinson and Cohen, although they hadn’t pressed the matter, were clearly worried by Johnson’s meeting that afternoon with Kravis. Would Johnson stay with Shearson or leap to the Kravis camp?

“Ross, if you want to go with them, you’re perfectly free to do it,” Robinson now told Johnson. “We won’t stop you.” Cohen echoed Robinson’s sentiments.

“Oh, hell,” Johnson said. “Let’s just everybody calm down. I’ve got to talk about this with my people first. Then we’ll decide what we’re going to do.”

By nightfall the forty-eighth floor was overflowing with people: teams from Shearson, Davis Polk, Jack Nusbaum’s law firm, and RJR were all busily reworking weeks of analysis in preparation for topping Kravis’s bid. Johnson gathered his executives in his office. Horrigan, Henderson, John Martin, and the others draped themselves over the cream-colored furniture and lined the walls.

“This is the situation,” Johnson said, explaining Kravis’s offer. “I’m not going to make a unilateral decision here. We’re going to vote on it.

I’ll do what you guys want to do. I want each of you to tell me how you feel.

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