Word: bendix
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...began as a fairly straightforward corporate merger fight. But by last week the multiplying twists and turns in the convoluted takeover battle between Bendix Corp., the Michigan-based aerospace and auto-parts manufacturer, and Martin Marietta Corp., a leading defense contractor of Bethesda, Md., had become an embarrassing parody of Big Business in action. Seemingly unconcerned about the best interests of their stockholders or employees, some of America's top executives were threatening each other with multibillion-dollar stock ploys, while jetting cross-country for clandestine strategy sessions, tying up courtrooms from Michigan to Maryland and wasting millions...
...last Thursday, Martin Marietta, with 1981 sales of $3.3 billion, had acquired 46% of Bendix stock for some $900 million. But Bendix, with 1981 sales of $4.4 billion, had bought 70% of Marietta's shares for $1.2 billion. While Bendix and Marietta were scrapping, Allied Corp., a New Jersey-based conglomerate, with 1981 revenues of $6.4 billion, lumbered into the fray, offering in effect to take over both companies for $2.3 billion...
Finally, in a dramatic finale on Friday, the three combatants reached a truce. Allied would acquire Bendix for $1.9 billion, and Marietta would remain an independent company. If the deal goes through, the firms will have spent about $4 billion, much of it borrowed from banks, to buy and shuffle about one another's shares. Yet no one seems quite sure what good, if any, will result...
...boardroom saga began last month with a bid of some $1.5 billion by Bendix's ambitious chairman, William Agee, 44, to buy Martin Marietta and thereby acquire that firm's prestigious and profitable defense business. Stung by Agee's move, Marietta President Thomas Pownall, 60, launched a counteroffer of about $1.5 billion to buy Bendix instead. In addition, he persuaded United Technologies' chairman, Harry Gray, 62, who over the years had built his company into a $14 billion conglomerate with a string of successful takeover raids, to make a parallel bid for Bendix...
...unlike a military campaign, this tangled four-way struggle has produced profits for the financiers and spoils for the strategists, and inflicted casualties among innocent bystanders, including workers at the companies involved and shareholders around the country. Though Bendix had assembled a cash hoard of $575 million over the past two years by selling off some of its less profitable businesses, mainly forest products, Chairman William Agee still had to arrange credit lines for another $1 billion from a consortium of banks to make his takeover bid. Cash-poor Martin Marietta was forced to borrow $892.5 million so that...