Barbarians At the Gate
July 6th, 2008The book “Barbarians At the Gate” written by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar is the accurate recollection of the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco tobacco and biscuit company in America. A fascinating read of greedy and egotistical directors who sell a company to benefit themselves. The eighties is a time in American investment finance history where leveraged buyouts were a popular method to buy a company. A leveraged buyout uses junk bonds (bonds below investment grade) to buy out the shares of a listed company. The acquiring company will sell off the the lagging business units of the newly bought company and may run the remaining units under a different company name. Both authors wrote the award level account of the buyout and showed the greed for power on wall street. Although this is the ethical objective of the book, I am excited by the finance described.
