Wouldn’t lots of people lose their jobs? Sure, Johnson said, “But the people that I have, particularly the Atlanta people, have very portable types of professions: accountants, lawyers, secretaries. It isn’t that I would be putting them on the breadline. We have excellent severance arrangements.” That wasn’t quite true. The special committee wanted each bidder to include employee-protection guarantees in their draft merger agreements, a notion the management group was stoutly resisting. The point would take on significance, because a longtime employee was lobbying hard for the employee
...more
