Reddit reviews Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco
We found 8 Reddit comments about Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Barbarians at the Gate The Fall of RJR Nabisco
RJR Nabisco, one of the biggest LBO's at the time. I believe there's been bigger ones since then, but I'm not an expert. However, I'd highly recommend reading Barbarians at the Gate, which is a fantastic read on the topic.
http://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Gate-Fall-RJR-Nabisco/dp/0061655554/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406316997&sr=1-1&keywords=rjr+nabisco
Have Wikipedia/Google by your side and research anything you come across that doesn't make complete sense or you'd like to delve into further.
Consumer Companies
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Google
On Amazon
RJR Nabisco
On Amazon
Anheuser-Busch
On Amazon
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Investment companies
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Blackstone Group
On Amazon
Goldman Sachs
On Amazon
Morgan Stanley
On Amazon
All of these are 4+ stars and absolutely excellent reads. I recommend any of them depending on what you want to read about. Let me know if you want some more.
Kindly fuck off with the ad hominem attacks. I'm interested in discussing the subject, not in name-calling.
I disagree with your base premise - you are correlating corporate efficiency with benefit to the country at large. Back it up. A company (ideally) turns improved efficiency into profit, which is then either given to shareholders as dividends, or used for other business activity - how does that help the rest of the country? What if the buying company isn't American (which is often the case) - are you arguing that corporate efficiency is the answer for all global economic woes?
There are arguments that efficiency is required to effectively compete with foreign companies (e.g. Japanese car manufacturers) - but that in turn means that a buy-out and selling off of assets can only be good if the buying companies are not foreign (or all of the money they make stays within the country). So buy-outs are not universally beneficial for the country.
Incidentally - since you reference Buffet. What does he have to say about improving technological efficiency? It isn't always a good thing, especially in a competitive market - improved efficiency allows you to reduce costs and pass that on to customers in order to be more competitive. Then all of your competitors introduce the same technology, match your efficiency and match your price. Net result - you're no better off than before, but you've spent a ton of money on updating infrastructure. This is not beneficial for the corporation.
Reducing an argument to absurdities doesn't dismiss the argument - three companies make cookies, and each employs 10,000 people. One company buys out the other two, and due to economies of scale can produce the same amount of product using 20,000 people. Your assumption is that the 10,000 now out of work can pursue other activities. Looking at historic and recent workforce disasters in the car industry, this is patently false. I agree that the solution is not to stifle advancement, but I don't agree that this increase in unemployment is beneficial for the country. You're assuming an infinite supply of opportunity for these workers (if this was true, we would have zero unemployment).
Finally - you cannot state what I am insinuating. You're inferring something from my words that isn't present - you're choosing to use black and white for something that is far more complex. If it was simple, we wouldn't be dealing with the huge issues around unemployment and the economy. We also wouldn't have introduced a suck-ton of legislation to prevent what was happening in the 80s. This is a great read: http://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Gate-Fall-RJR-Nabisco/dp/0061655554/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342630908&sr=1-1&keywords=barbarians+at+the+gate
Anyway - there are too many different points in this discussion to track at once. Maybe we could narrow it to discussion of your main point that corporate success/profit/efficiency universally correlates to public benefit?
For those of you old enough to remember (like me), Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco is an excellent account of what happened during the leveraged buy out of RJR Nabisco.
/r/SecurityAnalysis maintain a decent reading list.
The following is taken from it:
History
Here is the desktop version of your link
Barbarians at the Gate
The Box
And obviously The Big Short