Barbarians at the Gate has been called one of the most influential business books of all time -- the definitive account of the largest takeover in Wall Street history. Bryan Burrough and John Helyar's gripping account of the frenzy that overtook Wall Street in October and November of 1988 is the story of deal makers and publicity flaks, of strategy meetings and society dinners, of boardrooms and bedrooms -- giving us not only a detailed look at how financial operations at the highest levels are conducted but also a richly textured social history of wealth at the twilight of the Reagan era.
Barbarians at the Gate -- a business narrative classic -- is must reading for everyone interested in the way today's world really works.
Better than "Wall Street" Definition of a page-turner, loved it. The authors got so much out of their interview subjects, the personal thoughts and dialog left you feeling like you were a part of these negotiations. They portrayed everyone even-handedly when it was probably tempting to make villains out of Ross Johnson or Henry Kravis. Extremely entertaining, a first class example of literary non-fiction.
What does all this have to do with 'business'? The author said it himself, "What does all this have to do with business? ". I bought this book hoping to get an insight into how large companys are run. Unfortunately it was full of details on how companys are sold, not run. I suppose if that is what you are after, then the book does its job. But if you wanted to learn something about real business, this is NOT the book for you.
Over rated Many people I know have read this book and rave about how good it is. However it is really just a factual account of the events with no real insight. The writing is ok but you are not transformed into the action. You get no since of the pressure or the egos. The characters are the real deal and the writes don't all you to understand them or even get you to like or hate them. The book left me a bit flat but if you have no idea how companies are bought and offers are made it is still worth the read. If you know how companies are bought it is worth the read just to be scared to death.
Ladies And Gentlemen, The 1980s!!! The mantra "Greed is good" was uttered by that 1980s paragon of Wall Street virtue, Gordon Gekko, yet it could just have easily been any one profiled in this mind-warping 1990 account of the leveraged buyout (LBO) of cigarette-and-cookie conglomerate RJR Nabisco, starting with RJR's chief executive, Ross Johnson.
Johnson was the one who first saw the benefits of taking RJR's undervalued stock private, boosting both his wealth and control. Small economies were not for him.
"I'm telling you, we're not going to start running a pushcart operation here," he tells his LBO partners at the outset. "I don't want a bunch of your guys coming around saying we should have five jets instead of six."
Those jets, used strictly by Johnson and his C-suite buddies for such emergencies as shuttling Johnson's beloved pet dog to safety after it bit someone, were one of many symbols of Johnson excess. Just as odd were his stabs at practicality, like introducing a smokeless cigarette, "Premier", which drew like chalk and tasted worse.
Authors Bryan Burroughs and John Helyar, who covered the story in 1988 for the Wall Street Journal, seem to have been everywhere at once, and show no sign of suffering from lack of access. Whether it's LBO king and Johnson nemesis Henry Kravis, other bidding groups led by First Boston and Forstmann Little, or the RJR management board, everyone seems well represented. One gets the feeling some of these people enjoyed the chance to tell of their small part in one of the biggest stories of the decade.
Yet nothing seemed on the level here, least of all the money put up by the bidders, which had a heavy reliance on junk bonds. Numbers themselves made no sense. At one point in the bidding, Kravis engineers a deal whereby he and his partners are paid their operating expenses by RJR in exchange for hanging around another hour.
"Forty-five million dollars to wait sixty minutes. Incredibly [RJR head legal adviser Peter] Atkins and Company thought it was a good deal."
Burroughs and Helyar's greatest accomplishment is by sending you deep enough behind the looking glass that you understand Atkins' position. The authors do a great job of bringing the rest of the fantasy world to life with welcome doses of color and wit.
At times, especially at the end, they get hung up with the level of detail they present, telling us not only who was at a particular meeting but where they sat, who was eating an apple, who was wearing a puff handkerchief, what color it was, etc.
But the book is solid and well-written, and not nearly as snippy as it could have been. Only Johnson's buddy Ed Horrigan comes off as a complete hardcase. Johnson himself seems fairly amiable even at his greediest.
The well-remembered HBO adaptation softsoaps Johnson further by having him played by the quintessentially smooth James Garner. It's an enjoyable movie that made me want to read this. Now I find the book preferable for the more balanced way it handles other characters like Kravis and Ted Forstmann (a joke character in the movie, but a prescient figure in the book who came up with the expression that makes for the title.) There are a lot of brickbats in evidence here, but no axes.
Greed is still with us, of course, yet "Barbarians" takes us to a time when it managed at once to be more comical and stylish than today.
A Big Deal Barbarians at the Gate is a classic of the business book genre, and with the private equity boom we have seen in the last couple of years, it is still as relevant as it was when it came twenty years ago. It is the story or some extremely unlikable rich people brought low by equally unsavory, but much smarter rich people, and it gives you an inside feel for the major wall street deal like no other book can.
Barbarians at the Gate is the story of an attempt to take RJR Nabisco private, and then the series of take over attempts that were instigated by the original privatization plan. Johnson, the CEO of RJR, comes off as pompous, full of himself, and not very smart. He's like a frat boy who makes it by glad handing people and buying rounds of drinks. Kravis, of legendary private equity firm KKR, comes off like a financier god. Brilliant, pushy, and beyond your puny human morals. Guess who gets the company in the end.
A must read for anyone interested in modern Wall Street.
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