Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco | Bryan Burrough, John Helyar

Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco | Bryan Burrough, John Helyar | Excellent Work

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Barbarians at the ...

	Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco Bryan Burrough, John Helyar Collins Business, 2003 - 592 pages average customer review:based on 88 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

What a great book!

This book is one of the best business books out there and you wont waste a penny on it.
The story shows how greed and money can destroy even the wildest of dreams and ambition in the world that we live in.The go go 80's was the time of the big swinging you-know-what believing themselves as the masters of the universe thus inevitably above everything else.

The story of how a great american company RJR Nabisco loses battle for control of the company by a group a financiers of KKR led by Henry Kravis.The story unfolds from the time Ross Johson,the CEO of RJR Nabisco, decides to take the company private.In doing so he puts the company in play and then the action begins to take place as other huge financial firms with ego as huge as Ross Johnson try to get a piece of the action.In the end there is only one winner and doznes of losers.

Barbarians at the gate also gives you an insight on the LBO fad and how it works.Those who follow wallstreet in the 80's know that non of this could have happened werent it for the service of Michael Milken and his junk bonds.in any case,it is interesting how the authors who obviously went to great lengths researching and interviewing the players involved and displays the facts in such an entertaining manner you wish you wanted to finish the book in one sitting!!

The only con i found was the story of how RJR and Nabisco came into existent (the authors stretch this bit too far when they could have done it in 15 pages). nonetheless, it was a great read.

10 stars for this book!!

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Excellent Work

Based on exhaustive research, the authors have done a fantastic job putting it all together.

The Greed of an Era

This book covers in depth the LBO of RJR Nabisco in the late 1980s. Recommended to me by an investment banker friend that knew I wanted to go into M&A work, I decided to read it. I thought the book was excellent, but maybe unnecessarily long. The authors were meticulous in explaining everything about the deal and those involved - from the history to every single meeting and telephone conversation. The two authors never mentioned whether they were present during every conversation or not, but did an incredible job at recreating all that happened nonetheless. For someone interested in pursuing a top Wall Street job, this book is a must. For everyone else that just likes good non-fiction, this book does a superb job at representing the greed of an era.

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A new book about KKR

You may be interested in the book about the murder death of
a former KKR executive (Almost Paradise, by Kieran Crowley, 2005.) It discussed how the corporate raiders like KKR operates:

1. A group of raiders would locate a fat target,
undervalued, according to the stock price. It was best
to win the cooperation of the concern's board members
in advance, for an uncontested buyout.
2. Next the raiders would quickly secure massive
financing from one or more big banks to fund their
buyout offer to the stockholders of the corporation,
who could be expected to agree to sell their shares
for a windfall profit. The raiders inflated their
offers with controversial "junk bonds," which made the
takeovers possible.
3. Then the raiders would run the company, selling off
assets, divisions, or property, and consolidating
operations to achieve massive profits. That often
meant wholesale layoffs of loyal workers who had been
doing a good job for a profitable firm.
4. At the end of the process, everyone who owned stock
made a nice profit, the bankers made a bigger profit,
and the raiders garnered the lion's share of the
liquidated assets, sometimes obscene amounts of cash
-- all for wringing money out of someone else's
company with other people's money and shaky bonds.
Everybody was happy -- except the workers who got
fired...

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Good introduction to corporate raiding, but starting to feel a little dated

There are plenty of good summaries of this book here, so I'll briefly make one point: this book is a good read, but the business climate has changed dramatically since it was written, and many of the characters here are retired or have moved to very different investing styles. So the book is worth reading, but I'm not convinced it is as timely as say Lowenstein's books on the Internet bubble or Hedge Funds, or any of the many Enron books out now.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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