American Icon by Bryce G. Hoffman

Author:Bryce G. Hoffman [Hoffman, Bryce G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-88607-1
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2012-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

Ford family attorney David Hempstead believed it would be a good idea to hire someone with no ties to the company to advise the family. After the spring 2006 meeting, he and family adviser Bruce Blythe began putting together a list of potential candidates. They moved cautiously, because they knew that any report that suggested the Ford family might be considering a sale would have major consequences for the company and its stock.

By early 2007, they had narrowed the field to two or three firms. The first was Perella Weinberg Partners, a “boutique investment bank” founded just a few months earlier by Joseph Perella, the former vice-chairman of Morgan Stanley, and Peter Weinberg, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs International, to provide corporate advice and asset management services. They were attractive for a couple of important reasons—the names Perella and Weinberg.

Joseph Perella was widely regarded as a “mergers and acquisitions pioneer” and a key player in one of the biggest corporate takeovers in history—the 1989 leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco. Peter Weinberg was the grandson of Mr. Wall Street himself, Sidney Weinberg, the legendary Goldman Sachs leader who had developed Ford Motor Company’s unique stock structure for Henry Ford II back in 1956.

Hempstead contacted the two men and asked if they would be interested in meeting with the Ford family. They jumped at the opportunity. Now the firm, which offered “sage counsel in the middle of huge decisions,” was waiting to make its pitch to the men and women who controlled America’s last great industrial dynasty.

But it was Alan Mulally’s turn to speak first.

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