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R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was founded in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1875 and changed its name to R. J. Reynolds Industries, Inc. in 1970.It became RJR Nabisco on April 25, 1986, after the company's $4.9 billion purchase, and earlier 1.9 billion stock swap, of Nabisco Brands Inc. in 1985.
R. J. Reynolds, founder Share of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, issued 15 March 1906. The son of a tobacco farmer in Virginia, Richard Joshua "R. J." Reynolds sold his shares of his father's company in Patrick County, Virginia, and ventured to the nearest town with a railroad connection, Winston-Salem, to start his own tobacco company. [3]
At $31.1 billion of transaction value, RJR Nabisco was the largest leveraged buyout in history until the 2007 buyout of TXU Energy by KKR and Texas Pacific Group. [19] In 2006 and 2007, a number of leveraged buyout transactions were completed that for the first time surpassed the RJR Nabisco leveraged buyout in terms of nominal purchase price.
Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco is a 1989 book about the leveraged buyout (LBO) of RJR Nabisco, written by investigative journalists Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. The book is based upon a series of articles written by the authors for The Wall Street Journal . [ 1 ]
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During Gerstner's 11-year tenure at American Express, membership had increased from 8.6 million to 30.7 million. He left AmEx in 1989 to succeed Ross Johnson as chairman and chief executive officer of RJR Nabisco following its $25 billion leveraged buyout by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. [8]
One prominent episode in the life of the company was the 1988 bidding war for RJR Nabisco. Forstmann Little offered to acquire RJR Nabisco, but the management (chiefly F. Ross Johnson) instead chose Shearson Lehman Hutton. In the end, the board of directors chose Forstmann Little's arch-rival, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
Under Kravis and Roberts the firm was responsible for the 1988 leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco. At a cost of $31.4 billion, [ 14 ] it was then the highest price ever paid for a commercial enterprise. The publicity surrounding the event led to the story being dramatized in the book and film, Barbarians at the Gate . [ 15 ]