cover image The Money Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Great Buyout Boom of the 1980's

The Money Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Great Buyout Boom of the 1980's

Roy C. Smith. Dutton Books, $22.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-525-24929-0

Smith ( Global Bankers ) believes that the merger mania and leveraged buyouts of the 1980s have been subject to ``negative exaggeration'' by critics. Citing evidence that this frenzied corporate restructuring has led to increased American productivity and competitiveness, he reviews the acrimonious buyout of RJR-Nabisco, the hostile raids on Polaroid and Time-Warner, the demise of Drexel Burnham Lambert, the bust-up of the Beatrice conglomerate and other headline-grabbing stories. From J. P. Morgan's consolidation of U.S. Steel in 1901 to the runaway '20s to the merger booms of the '60s and '80s, the record, in Smith's estimate, is clear: merger waves and bull markets tend to go together, and they involve only a relatively modest amount of GNP, even at their peaks. Smith, who teaches international business and finance at New York University, has written a challenging book that punctures many widely held assumptions about the mergers and acquisitions process. (Nov.)