Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough

Feb 18, 2009 Arminius rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: business

Barbarians at the Gates is a fascinating tale about the rise and fall of food giant Nabisco. Ross Johnson was head of Nabisco’s rival Standard Brands. They show how he used his affable personality and his ability to befriend coworkers, bosses and over-seeing boards to propel himself to Standard’s CEO while winning a battle against his superior and getting him ousted. Nabisco gaining competition from Frito Lay and Proctor Gamble looked to expand, so they look to Stand Brands. Johnson negotiates a...more Barbarians at the Gates is a fascinating tale about the rise and fall of food giant Nabisco. Ross Johnson was head of Nabisco’s rival Standard Brands. They show how he used his affable personality and his ability to befriend coworkers, bosses and over-seeing boards to propel himself to Standard’s CEO while winning a battle against his superior and getting him ousted. Nabisco gaining competition from Frito Lay and Proctor Gamble looked to expand, so they look to Stand Brands. Johnson negotiates a merger as head of Standard Brands with Nabisco. He agreed to let Nabisco CEO Bob Schaeberle head the combined companies while he remained second in command. He charms Schaeberle and Nabisco board members and he moves Standard Brand employees into key positions. He has all night parties with his coworkers drinking to excess yet planning out business strategies. He pals around with sports celebrities like Frank Gifford and insists on corporate jets.

Nabisco does well, under a never- sit-still ran business, under his guidance. He makes business acquisitions and sells others. He then takes over as Schaeberle retires.

Then the book looks at RJ Reynolds tobacco. It is a little confusing that the book makes a sudden shift to detailing the history of Reynolds but you figure out that this company is going to be the next venture Mr. Johnson gets involved with. Reynolds was huge during the 1970’s when cigarettes were a huge success. They had a big winner with the brand Camel. Then the Surgeon General announced that cigarette smoke caused cancer. So Reynolds anticipating a decline in sales looked to diversify into other areas. Nabisco and Johnson are ready to accept their vision.

So they combine. Ross Johnson, as head of Nabisco, agrees to let RJ Reynolds chief Tylee Wilson head the combined company and be his second in command. Ross Johnson is so coy though. He charmed Wilson and RJR Nabisco’s newly created board of directors to get almost everything he wanted including RJR Nabisco’s fleet of airplanes.
Wilson falls out of favor with the board for not informing the board of his secret project to create a smokeless cigarette. As a result he is dumped and replaced by Ross Johnson.

Ross Johnson as head of RJR Nabisco continued his shake up ways. He enjoyed his lavish lifestyle as RJR N stock price dropped from the mid $70 per share to the 50’s.
This kind of action did not bother other CEO’s as long as they were making a profit. RJR were certainly making huge profits but it was a good reason, in Johnson's eyes, to shake things up again.

So, he leaves hints that he is looking at another merger to boost stock prices. Leveraged buy out (LBO) companies became interested. Johnson, enticed by the riches he can obtain through an LBO encourages a friend at American Express owned Shearson Lehmen to buy out RJR Nabisco. (If anyone reads this and has a question about LBO’s please e-mail me and I will try to explain it to you).

Wall Street vultures then ensue all trying to get a piece of the pie. What I got from the book is that it wasn’t Shearson Lehman who was going to get to enrich Johnson and themselves with an LBO but it was going to be between LBO orchestrator giants Kravis/ Roberts and Forstmann Little. Adding to the drama was Ted Forstmann’s extreme dislike of Kravis chief Henry Kravis. Well to my surprise, Forstmann Little drops out. Then out of nowhere a down trotting company named First Boston comes up with a soon expiring tax loophole to orchestrate an LBO takeover which amounts to over 3 million dollars in additional profit.

So it becomes Shearson, Kravis and First Boston all in for the play. After weeks of haggling First Boston’s plan did not sit well with the RJR Nabisco board but managed to drive up the cost of the buy-out to $109 per stock share. Kravis had the most reliable financing plan so they won the bid despite Shearson’s $112 bid.

Ross Johnson got the axe when Kravis took over but he left with his stated goal of raising the stock price. In fact, it doubled. However, he left a great company in shambles and received a $53 million dollar separation package for his work.
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May 18, 2008 Suzanne rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

Read this in 1991 just after it first came out. I couldn't put it down. If you don't understand the financial pages of newspapers and the terms they use, this is an easy way to learn about acquisitions, hostile takeovers, liquidity, assets, etc. Perhaps a bit dated now, but the author (a financial journalist) describes what happened here in the States in the 80's, a time when small businesses (and huge ones like RJR Reynolds) were bought out, sometimes just for the land they were built upon. The...more

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Jun 07, 2012 MisterFweem rated it 5 of 5 stars

Read this one again. It's worth reading more than once. Still five stars. Even better after reading Benjamin Barber's "Consumed."

It's probably because I don't get around much, but I've only seen one depiction of greed that I thought was funny, and that's the one from The Addams Family, in which Gomez Addams shows the impostor Fester how to get to the money vault by pulling on the book titled "Greed" on the bookshelf.

Then there's the other kind of greed, the greed that is just nasty, heartless, s...more Read this one again. It's worth reading more than once. Still five stars. Even better after reading Benjamin Barber's "Consumed."

It's probably because I don't get around much, but I've only seen one depiction of greed that I thought was funny, and that's the one from The Addams Family, in which Gomez Addams shows the impostor Fester how to get to the money vault by pulling on the book titled "Greed" on the bookshelf.

Then there's the other kind of greed, the greed that is just nasty, heartless, shameful and yet shameless, as epitomized in Barbarians at the Gate, a wonderful non-fiction book by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. In the book they paint a picture of egos and cash chasing after RJR Nabisco, a conglomerate that makes everything from cigarettes to Oreo cookies. I found the book at a library sale over the weekend, and feel like the dollar I spent buying it was well spent (Sorry to the authors; but I rarely buy new books these days. In fact, it's been at least ten years since I last bought a new one). The story was so captivating I had to read it midstream, interruping my reading of Max Hastings' Nemesis, which si good, but just not as compelling.

So what makes Barbarians so compelling? It's the perspective. Over the weekend, we got a little perspective ourselves. We're looking for a new vehicle, one to replace our van but one that has the towing capacity to haul our camper. So we went to the local Toyota dealership and started looking at SUVs. Bad idea. Though they have what we want, their prices are just insane -- out of our price range, to the tune of $30,000 to $35,000. It all made the deal my father-in-law offered us on his Honda Pilot, at a mere $14,000, look a lot better, so we're going that route again.This ties in with Barbarians because with the amounts of money involved in competing attempts to buy RJR Nabisco, there is no perspective. Billions of dollars flying through the air, pushed there by men and companies poised to make millions in fees. And little of the money they're playing with is their own.

Soak this in a bit:

There were, Finn admitted, some unique problems to be ironed out. For one thing, deferring $3.5 billion in taxes -- a conservative scenario -- was unprecedented. According to Finn's calculations, this single transaction would boost the annual federal budget deficit by 2 percent. If first Boston proposed it, RJR Nabisco's board would almost certainly have to take into account the political fallout. "It's clear," Finn said, "that Washington would go apeshit."
No kidding. But as Theodore Forstmann, senior partner in Forstmann Little & Co., one of the firms that vied to buy RJR Nabisco in 1988, said, "It's like Alice in Wonderland. The reason Kravis can pay these incredible sums is that his money isn't real. It's phony. It's funny money. It's wampum." Of course, Forstmann is talking here of the junk bonds of the 1980s, but in my perspective, when you're playing with billions of dollars, it is all funny money and wampum; such amounts have no basis in reality because none of us can imagine spending that much money on something, not even skee-ball.

That's the perspective I gained from the book. Anybody who plays with insane amounts of money -- whether they're corporate raiders or the federal government -- has lot perspective on what they're actually doing, or spending. It's all funny money or wampum. A billion here or three billion there is meaningless when you're dealing in hundreds of billions, or trillions. If a little leaks out along the way, it doesn't matter, because there's always more wampum where that comes from. So spend, friend, spend.

I'm sure, unfortunately, that the greed depicted in Barbarians is eclipsed by what's gone on in the past few years, from Enron to the mortgage meltdown. I'm grateful that we have fine writers like Burrough and Helyar to chronicle these kinds of things. but it's a truism in the business world, especially in New York, that the kinds of shenanigans displayed in this book are cheered on by the business press and the business world in general, unless the deals go sour and people don't make money. Everyone wants to be their friends (even their enemies) until the accusations start.(less)

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Apr 15, 2008 Patricia rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone in business school

Recommended to Patricia by: hbs

Shelves: nonfiction

This book appealed to my morbid curiosity. It was like watching a train wreck... I just couldn't tear my eyes away. I was totally facinated by the raunchiness and greed of Ross Johnson. I was blown away by the unfolding of the events in the last quarter of the book. I think that it makes an interesting commentary on the social pcychology of bankers. I loved it and I think that it is something that everyone going into business should read.

It was in my husbands distribution box at school. He was s...more

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Jul 19, 2007 Sean rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you haven’t noticed, I am a connoisseur of the business bestseller. I read ‘em all, and this one is among the best. This, Den of Thieves and the Informant are as good as these books get. Here we got conniving and scheming on a massive scale. Extremely unlikable rich assholes brought low by equally unsavory, but way smarter rich people.

It’s the story of an attempt to take RJR Nabisco private, and then a series of take over attempts that were instigated by the original privatization plan. Johns...more

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Nov 25, 2008 Tammy rated it 3 of 5 stars

11-07-08
This tsunami of details in this story of the leveraged buy-out of RJR Nabisco would be mind-numbing if it were not for the sharp anger at the incessant and insatiable greed it highlights.

One feels an eerie sense of déjà vu reading this book. The RJR Nabisco takeover battle was fought in 1988, but the unmitigated (and unregulated) greed on the part of Wall Street seems to only have changed in form, not in magnitude. It borders (then and now) on the obscene.

This book is not for the faint o...more

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Feb 09, 2013 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

I picked this up at a mass book sale, based on a quick scan of the front and back covers. My initial impression was of a book that would add substance to my disdain for the financial industry. The back cover certainly gives that impression. Yet in fact it had quite the opposite effect...

Not that this is a pro-finance book. Anything but. Written by two New York Times journalists, it chronicles the massive buyout of RJR Nabisco, a food and tobacco giant, during the late eighties. For its time it w...more

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May 27, 2012 Author of Antologia de Ideias rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a book I would definitely recommend to any left-wing, tree-hughing, wise and moderate person. Kidding!

There are two "époques" of the 20th century I would love to have lived in. If I would have ever survived any of them, my memories would now be of great fun and excitement, to a level we can only get from certain sinful excesses. These are: the swinging-sixties in London and the go-go eighties of, either the City of London or, Wall Street. This book is all about that. The innocence of in...more

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Oct 15, 2011 Rebecca rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, nonfiction

I try to rate books based on how well they achieve their own objectives, and I think this one nails its goals perfectly. Corporate finance is labyrinthian by nature--to understand what actually happened in any given deal requires being able to track the money, the legal manuverings, and the easily ignored but incredibly critical personal relationships. (When I was a child, I thought that business deals were made based off of what was most profitable for the company. It turns out in real life, fa...more I try to rate books based on how well they achieve their own objectives, and I think this one nails its goals perfectly. Corporate finance is labyrinthian by nature--to understand what actually happened in any given deal requires being able to track the money, the legal manuverings, and the easily ignored but incredibly critical personal relationships. (When I was a child, I thought that business deals were made based off of what was most profitable for the company. It turns out in real life, far more important factors are who plays golf with who and who is still pissed about not getting onto the board of some third company two years ago.) Barbarians at the Gate involves hundreds of people, with literally dozens of main characters (helpfully listed out by firm in the front of the book, a list you will return to again and again). They interviewed almost all of them personally, and include critical backstory for everyone involved, along with corporate histories, notes on legal ramifications, explanations of obscure financial procedures, and an overview of the history of the financial industry in general. Every bit of it is important.

That's not to say I enjoyed all of it, but my discomfort was never boredom. More just that I've been in enough meetings and contract negotiations to watch quite a lot of similar decisions being made, and some of this was close enough to home to raise my blood pressure by proxy.

The sheer hubris of some of these people is shocking. The CEO effectively kicks over this hornet's nest because he's bored and anxious about personal problems, and likes to stir things up for the sake of change. His stated reason for starting the LBO is incredibly weak--he's concerned about the stock price and thinks they're undervalued. He says he did it for the stockholders. (The company's stable at the moment and raking in money, which can be either plowed back in to make the company stronger or handed out dividends. As far as I can tell, doing short-sighted things to raise your stock price only benefits your stockholders if they then sell your stock. At which point, they stop becoming your stockholders. Now you have new stockholders, who own artificially inflated stock whose price cannot be sustained, who you have screwed from the very beginning. Honestly, I think trying to raise stock price "for the stockholders" is an asinine policy. The only way that raising the price will continue to benefit your stockholders is if you've done so by actually making your company more valuable--inventing new products, finding new markets, and investing in long term stability. Blowing it up via financial tricks does you no good in the long run--which (spoilers!) is exactly what happens here.)

But he's not the only one. The board have their own egos (and financial investments) to protect. Each of the bidding firms cannot afford to lose out on the biggest deal ever, but almost no one factors in their respective desperations, which leads to a spiral of increasing hysteria as each party is surprised when someone else trumps them.There are mysterious leaks to the press, back channel betrayals, ranting Cassandras, and a mad sprint through Manhattan when a traffic jam delays a critical bid. It's completely absorbing and a little sickening at the same time.

This is a sausage-making book, as in, the more you know about what goes into high finance, the more horrified you're likely to be. As I'd mentioned, I've been exposed to some similar shenanigans, albeit on a much smaller scale, but it rings true. This is real-life high drama, featuring political manuverings that make and break fortunes as well as destroy jobs and lives across the country. The fallout still influences the behavior of CEOs and investment banks today. One might expect a detailed financial history to be boring, but that ignores the fact that the driving force behind any such deal is the relationships between the people, in all their brilliant, vain, loyal, treacherous, ambitious, flawed glory. (less)

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Oct 25, 2010 Mat Cendana rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is another one of the books that belonged to the father of Aniza, Azian, Aimi, Azman and Azni Zain Ahmed. Published in 1990, it centres on the fight to control RJR Nabisco at the end of 1988.

Barbarians takes the reader into the world of a major corporation, with the management and board of directors, investors and Wall Street financiers splitting into various factions and camps in what had started out as way to increase the company's share price. The authors, who were with the Wall Street...more

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Apr 27, 2009 Randy rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've been on a tear reading about smart people who do stupid things with other peoples' money, so I downloaded this classic to the Kindle and read it very quickly. RJR/Nabisco's President Ross Johnson was obsessed with his company's undervalued stock and with living the high life, and he hit on the idea of arranging a leveraged buyout. He evidently figured that a lowball bid would let him continue running the company as he saw fit. After he announced the idea to RJR's board, all hell broke loose...more

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Nov 26, 2008 se lee marked it as to-read

Shelves: business

Popular passages:

No reporter can with 100 percent accuracy re-create events that occurred some time before. Memories play tricks on participants, the more so when the outcome has become clear. A reporter tries to guard against inaccuracies by checking with a variety of sources, but it is useful for a reader — and an author — to be humbled by this journalistic limitation. - Page xvi
Appears in 5 books from 1987-2003

I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It costs a penny to make. Sell it...more

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May 09, 2009 Marla rated it 5 of 5 stars

The title of this book makes it sound like a real yawner--unless one is really into business narratives. However, it was anything but boring. In fact, I found it to be more of a page turner than most novels.

It wasn't just the history and events in the leveraged bailout of Nabisco that were so interesting. I found the book so remarkable because it offered an insight into the "Masters of the Universe"--the wealthy movers and shakers at the highest levels of corporate decision making. I was awed to...more

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Feb 11, 2010 Matthew rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: business-history, essaysjournalism

Simply a fabulous work of business reportage -- I can't imagine the work the authors must've done to track down all the characters involved in this multi-headed deal, and to try to objectively represent each of them at each part of the tale, without dropping loose ends . It reads extremely well and its enormously insightful about the psyche and culture of that time.

It reads in 3 parts: the first third is a swift industrial history of RJ Reynolds, Nabisco, and Standard Brands as separate compani...more Simply a fabulous work of business reportage -- I can't imagine the work the authors must've done to track down all the characters involved in this multi-headed deal, and to try to objectively represent each of them at each part of the tale, without dropping loose ends . It reads extremely well and its enormously insightful about the psyche and culture of that time.

It reads in 3 parts: the first third is a swift industrial history of RJ Reynolds, Nabisco, and Standard Brands as separate companies -- how each were founded by similarly skilled, hungry, gritty entrepreneurs, and the clash between each company's old guard and Ross Johnson, the new-age, jet-setting, golf-playing, sports-personality-adoring, extravagant CEO who eventually came to head the conglomerate RJR Nabisco by learning to pamper compliant directors.

In a way the culture clash on Main Street is an interesting parallel to what emerges in the 2nd third, which describes how various bidders entered the LBO processes. Here the 2 leaders of KKR, Henry Kravis and George Roberts, are contrasted with Jerome Kolberg, the original creator of the LBO form. His younger sucessors took KOlberg's template of what was an initially management friendly approach and evolved it into a far larger, aggressive strategy. Not to say you blame them for it: KKR actually emerges as the good guys of the narrative, certainly under their control Nabisco's shareholders would not lose money to needless golf tournament sponsorships -- but aside from that, there is the underlying context of the Michael Milken fueled junk bond liquidity boom that led to everybody -- such as the Shearson and Salomon bankers, who come across worst -- wanting in on the LBO game and taking bids to ridiculous levels.

The final third accelerates into a blow by blow account of the final weeks of the bid, how First Boston entered with an extraordinary long-shot bid and kept the race open, and offers a lot of insightful detail about how the auction process works and the board of directors role here.

The two gripes I have with the book: first, there is little explanation of how LBOs work, and little attempt to explain how, for eg, the partners at KKR are regarded as financially more sophisticated than their Shearson and Saloman counterparts. Fortunately I sort of know what an LBO is, but I've love to get some insight as to how complicated it could get, or to have more insight into the technical differences between the competing offers. Some details are shared here in the final chapters, and I can understand why the authors steered clear of this as they interpreted the deal as ultimately personality and ego driven, rather than purely on investment returns.

The other issue I have is related: too many characters are sketched as personalities -- cool, intense, dogged, extravagant, etc -- again without much regard for discussing their actual competence. Certain characters are too easy to dismiss, if all the reader had to go on was the reporters' account, but I don't believe you can be that incompetent and get to be CEO of a major American blue chip, or rise to the top ranks of an investment bank, no matter how ratty it's reputation may be among its bluer peers. (less)

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Oct 18, 2011 Marzie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: journalism

Read this several years ago and was reminded of that by the current corporate corruption and greed on display now. We forget how these jackals were in the 1980's and now they are back with the same crap. If you want an insight of how this all began through junk bonds and worthless take-overs this is the place to start. Corporations haven't changed since this was written they have just gotten more despicable and corrupted.

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Jan 15, 2013 Charles Allan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: economics

The 1980s are the prototypical Wall Street decade. The country had emerged from a lengthy slumber marked by stagnant growth and a bear market.

Many of the high profile deals of the 1980s were in fact part of a massive industrial reorganization of America. It was the age of the junk bond, leveraged buy-outs and hostile takeovers.

Barbarians at the Gate covers one aspect of that story: the machinations surrounding the massive 1988 RJR Nabsico leveraged buy-out. It's a titanic struggle of egos betwee...more

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May 21, 2009 Anders Gustafson rated it 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the story, but it dragged in a few sections. The authors admitted to writing this SIX HUNDRED PAGE book in a matter of months...needless to say, there were some unnecessary and/or repetitive sections that probably could have been cut. I think now is a good time to read it, though, given that it deals with the same questions of burdensome debt and dubious corporate ethics that contributed to our current economic woes. If you've ever scratched your head at the terms "private equity", "LB...more

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Jan 07, 2013 Alkek Library rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: economics

The 1980s are the prototypical Wall Street decade. The country had emerged from a lengthy slumber marked by stagnant growth and a bear market.

Many of the high profile deals of the 1980s were in fact part of a massive industrial reorganization of America. It was the age of the junk bond, leveraged buy-outs and hostile takeovers.

Barbarians at the Gate covers one aspect of that story: the machinations surrounding the massive 1988 RJR Nabsico leveraged buy-out. It's a titanic struggle of egos betwee...more

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Aug 11, 2010 Manda rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Burrough and Helyar are two former Wall Street Journal reporters who present a comprehensive telling of the battle for control of RJR Nabisco (yes, the cracker company), ultimately won by KKR, led by Henry Kravis in 1988. The book was written in 1990 and provided the final chapter on the LBO (leveraged buy-outs) excesses of the 1980's. By 1990, the stock market rally had made LBO's less attractive and some of the earlier deals were already starting to unravel and collapse under the weight of the...more Burrough and Helyar are two former Wall Street Journal reporters who present a comprehensive telling of the battle for control of RJR Nabisco (yes, the cracker company), ultimately won by KKR, led by Henry Kravis in 1988. The book was written in 1990 and provided the final chapter on the LBO (leveraged buy-outs) excesses of the 1980's. By 1990, the stock market rally had made LBO's less attractive and some of the earlier deals were already starting to unravel and collapse under the weight of the debt payments, as predicted by long-time junk bond critic and rival RJR Nabisco bidder Ted Forstmann.

The book reads like a documentary novel. Hence, they have written a tale of personalities, with a special interest in Ross Johnson and Henry Kravis, often to the detriment of really explaining the financial and business details. The reader can learn intricate details about Johnson and the Wall Streeters preferences in cars, apartments, drinks, wives, schools, etc. The authors seem to think we need a biographic account of all minor players, starting with their grade-school years, and the end result is 528 pages and sometimes minimal financial explanation.

The main criticism, reading this now, is how dated the material has become. The authors would do well to provide some new material on how the deal has worked out. From other sources, I learned that KKR renegotiated the deal in the early 1990's (the resets were nearly toxic after all) and sold out their position entirely in 1995, more or less breaking even, depending on whose numbers you use.

The story of the final bids and the final final bids is truly riveting and meticulously researched here. The Johnson group ultimately presents a bid that is slightly higher than the KKR bid, but the board discounts the Johnson bid since it does not guarantee the bond pricing, and calls the whole thing a tie. At that point, the Board accepts the KKR bid, for non-economic reasons--mostly due to the bad publicity related to Johnson's greed. Ironically, Johnson had already given up much of his payout in order to boost the total value of the bid to the shareholders.

This is not the type of book I normally read, but I'm glad I read it. It was recommended to me by a friend and business aficionado, and I would definitely recommend this to other readers as well. it reads more like a thriller once you get past the initial third of the book where the authors are filling the reader in with background information.(less)

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Jul 16, 2010 Adam Ware rated it 3 of 5 stars

The story of the fight to control RJR Nabisco in the fall of 1988. Of course, I was too young to remember any of this, but apparently the Nabisco takeover was the only story making business headlines at the time. It all started when the Nabisco's management made a bid to purchase the company. Soon, investment banks, leveraged buy out firms, and every other Wall Street player was trying to get a piece of the action. Fierce competition took the bidding to unbelievable heights. A few men became obs...more

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Mar 24, 2010 Incoherent Allen rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a long, detailed book. I had a hard time getting through the first two thirds of it or so, but by then I was hooked. The world these men and women live in is so far different then my own it is hard to imagine being there. It is easy to deride the greed that oozes from the pores of all involved, yet without these people and their greed where would we be? They employ many people, they buy, they invest, and they pay.

Even if you didn't enjoy this book you should check out The Snowball: Warr ...more

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May 06, 2011 Rishi Prakash rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a 1990 book about the leveraged buyout (LBO) of RJR Nabisco which happened in 1988. Burroughs and Helyar tell the story of the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco in gripping fashion, showing how greed and shortsightedness contributed to the biggest and worst-managed corporate takeover in history. This is a great history lesson about what for nearly twenty years was been largest private equity transaction in terms of a nominal value(from an equity perspective). It started with an effort by t...more

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Aug 14, 2009 William Ramsay rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a great book. When it was written it was sent to 12 publishers and only one dared take a half-hearted chance on it. That was in 1990. It's been in print ever since and is used as a case study in most business schools. So much for the wisdom of publishers. It's the story of the leveraged buyout of RJR/Nebisco in 1988. It's not you typical dull business book. It's more like a thriller with a long list of characters and a story that clips along at a breakneck pace. If you think greed and ba...more

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Feb 17, 2012 Siby rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction-eco-fin, non-fiction

First of all, this book is really interesting and the style is gripping. It is not at all dry so people should not be put off by the fact that this is about corporate and Wall Street strategy and finacial maneuvering. Events and concepts have been explained in very lucid terms and in a very captivating fashion.

Having said that, this book was a revelation, not in the sense that I wasn't aware of corporate greed and the Senior management's capability to get away with things. I was just blown away...more

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Mar 22, 2011 Brinton rated it 5 of 5 stars

A fantastic account of what seems like a dull subject - the takeover war for RJR/Nabisco. Burrough gives enough detail to educate but enough character color and background to keep it fast. You can get lost a bit as to who is who and who does what - this is where I found my Kindle handy (easy to do quick searches for names), but overall this is an exceedingly readable book.

This vaulted near the top of my favorite business books (just behind Den of Thieves and Disney Wars and Michael Lewis).

Reco...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Terry Quirke rated it 5 of 5 stars

An excellent study in detail of the leveraged takeover of RJR Nabisco in the 1990's. The authors style and approach makes the whole thing extremely readable, complex financial details are presented in a legible manner so that those unfamiliar with financial areas can follow along easily. The whole tension turns the book it on a real page turner, with twists and turns at every angle. I got interested in financial books following the GFC Of 2007 and even though this book is set in an earlier decad...more

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May 23, 2009 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you had more than a passing glimpse at live on Wall Street in the 80s, this is required reading. Less about greed than about the intense competitiveness and strange values of the time, this book takes the reader through the minds of the bankers, tacticians and egomaniacs on all sides of the issue and explains how the wheels of this machine were set in motion long before the inevitable end. The insight into the final days, particularly how some members of each team at the end felt invulnerable...more

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Feb 27, 2012 Dawn rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-books, audio-books, non-fiction

This book gives details of the RJR Nabisco leveraged buyout. It is a decent read because it gives shape to the story of how greed and shortsightedness contributed to probably one of the most poorly done managed corporate takeover in history. I think the authors did a really good job of covering all aspects of this story, at times it brings home the meaning of fact can be stranger than fiction.

I got this one on audio and I must admit the reader kind of blew it for me. At times it felt like he was...more

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Jan 09, 2012 Lynne-marie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this very long and to me not very interesting book because it is considered a part of the Wall Street library of important documents, several others of which I have read with some enthusiasm and a quickening curiosity. This is not one of those. Perhaps it is a matter of style. I was beaten down by the facts herein, not enlightened by them. Perhaps I haven't the business mind that my other attempts to dip into the well of Business writing led me to believe I might have. In any case, I felt...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Anna rated it 5 of 5 stars

A must read.

We need a new version. When a guy heads up a company for 11 months and gets to leave with a 25 million bonus after nearly ruining the company something is wrong. We have a level of corruption in this country that has only grown. The oligarchy owns everything.

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Benito Mussolini

“For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the
whole truth; to know the...more

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title link	preview: Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/781182.Barbarians_at_the_Gate?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348520705l/781182.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/781182.Barbarians_at_the_Gate?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough[/url]

Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

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