Barbarians at the Gate Read Online Free
Author: Bryan Burrough, John Helyar
thought.”
Chapter
1
Ross’s philosophy is, “We’re going to have a party, a very sophisticated, complicated party.”
— O. C. ADAMS , consulting psychologist to RJR Nabisco *
Ross Johnson was being followed. A detective, he guessed, no doubt hired by that old skinflint Henry Weigl. Every day, through the streets of Manhattan, no matter where Johnson went, his shadow stayed with him. Finally he had had enough. Johnson had friends, lots of them, and one in particular who must have had contacts in the goon business. He had this annoying problem, Johnson explained to his friend. He’d like to get rid of a tail. No problem, said the friend. Sure enough, within days the detective vanished. Whatever the fellow was doing now, Johnson’s friend assured him, he was probably walking a little funny.
It was the spring of 1976, and at a second-tier food company named Standard Brands, things were getting ugly. Weigl, its crusty old chairman, was out to purge his number two, Johnson, the shaggy-haired young Canadian who pranced about Manhattan with glamorous friends such as Frank Gifford and “Dandy” Don Meredith. Weigl sicced a team of auditors on Johnson’s notoriously bloated expense accounts and collected tales of his former protégé’s extramarital affairs.
Johnson’s hard-drinking band of young renegades began plotting a counterattack, lobbying directors and documenting all the underlying rot in the company’s businesses. Rumors of an imminent coup began sweepingthe company’s Madison Avenue headquarters.
Then tensions exploded into the open: A shouting match erupted between Johnson and Weigl, a popular executive dropped dead, a board of directors was rent asunder. Everything came to a head at a mid-May board meeting. Weigl went in first, ready to bare his case against Johnson. Johnson followed, his own trap ready to spring.
As the hours wore on, Johnson’s aides, “the Merry Men,” wandered through Central Park, waiting for the victor to emerge. Things were bound to get bloody in there. But when it came to corporate politics, no one was ready to count out Ross Johnson. He seemed to have a knack for survival.
Until the fall of 1988 Ross Johnson’s life was a series of corporate adventures, in which he would not only gain power for himself but wage war on an old business order.
Under that old order, big business was a slow and steady entity. The Fortune 500 was managed by “company men”: junior executives who worked their way up the ladder and gave one company their all and senior executives who were corporate stewards, preserving and cautiously enhancing the company.
Johnson was to become the consummate “noncompany man.” He shredded traditions, jettisoned divisions, and roiled management. He was one of a whole breed of noncompany men who came to maturity in the 1970s and 1980s: a deal-driven, yield-driven nomadic lot. They said their mission was to serve company investors, not company tradition. They also tended to handsomely serve themselves.
But of all the noncompany men, Johnson cut the highest profile. He did the biggest deals, had the biggest mouth, and enjoyed the biggest perks. He would come to be the very symbol of the business world’s “Roaring Eighties.” And he would climax the decade by launching the deal of the century—scattering one of America’s largest, most venerable companies to the winds.
The man who would come to represent the new age of business was born in 1931 at the depth of an old one. Frederick Ross Johnson was raised in Depression-era Winnipeg, the only child of a lower-middle-class home. He was always “Ross,” never Fred—Fred was his father’s name. The senior Johnson was a hardware salesman by vocation, a woodworkerby avocation, and a man of few words. Johnson’s petite mother, Caroline, was the pepper pot of the household—a bookkeeper at a time when few married women worked, a crack bridge player in her free time. Young Ross
Chapter
1
Ross’s philosophy is, “We’re going to have a party, a very sophisticated, complicated party.”
— O. C. ADAMS , consulting psychologist to RJR Nabisco *
Ross Johnson was being followed. A detective, he guessed, no doubt hired by that old skinflint Henry Weigl. Every day, through the streets of Manhattan, no matter where Johnson went, his shadow stayed with him. Finally he had had enough. Johnson had friends, lots of them, and one in particular who must have had contacts in the goon business. He had this annoying problem, Johnson explained to his friend. He’d like to get rid of a tail. No problem, said the friend. Sure enough, within days the detective vanished. Whatever the fellow was doing now, Johnson’s friend assured him, he was probably walking a little funny.
It was the spring of 1976, and at a second-tier food company named Standard Brands, things were getting ugly. Weigl, its crusty old chairman, was out to purge his number two, Johnson, the shaggy-haired young Canadian who pranced about Manhattan with glamorous friends such as Frank Gifford and “Dandy” Don Meredith. Weigl sicced a team of auditors on Johnson’s notoriously bloated expense accounts and collected tales of his former protégé’s extramarital affairs.
Johnson’s hard-drinking band of young renegades began plotting a counterattack, lobbying directors and documenting all the underlying rot in the company’s businesses. Rumors of an imminent coup began sweepingthe company’s Madison Avenue headquarters.
Then tensions exploded into the open: A shouting match erupted between Johnson and Weigl, a popular executive dropped dead, a board of directors was rent asunder. Everything came to a head at a mid-May board meeting. Weigl went in first, ready to bare his case against Johnson. Johnson followed, his own trap ready to spring.
As the hours wore on, Johnson’s aides, “the Merry Men,” wandered through Central Park, waiting for the victor to emerge. Things were bound to get bloody in there. But when it came to corporate politics, no one was ready to count out Ross Johnson. He seemed to have a knack for survival.
Until the fall of 1988 Ross Johnson’s life was a series of corporate adventures, in which he would not only gain power for himself but wage war on an old business order.
Under that old order, big business was a slow and steady entity. The Fortune 500 was managed by “company men”: junior executives who worked their way up the ladder and gave one company their all and senior executives who were corporate stewards, preserving and cautiously enhancing the company.
Johnson was to become the consummate “noncompany man.” He shredded traditions, jettisoned divisions, and roiled management. He was one of a whole breed of noncompany men who came to maturity in the 1970s and 1980s: a deal-driven, yield-driven nomadic lot. They said their mission was to serve company investors, not company tradition. They also tended to handsomely serve themselves.
But of all the noncompany men, Johnson cut the highest profile. He did the biggest deals, had the biggest mouth, and enjoyed the biggest perks. He would come to be the very symbol of the business world’s “Roaring Eighties.” And he would climax the decade by launching the deal of the century—scattering one of America’s largest, most venerable companies to the winds.
The man who would come to represent the new age of business was born in 1931 at the depth of an old one. Frederick Ross Johnson was raised in Depression-era Winnipeg, the only child of a lower-middle-class home. He was always “Ross,” never Fred—Fred was his father’s name. The senior Johnson was a hardware salesman by vocation, a woodworkerby avocation, and a man of few words. Johnson’s petite mother, Caroline, was the pepper pot of the household—a bookkeeper at a time when few married women worked, a crack bridge player in her free time. Young Ross
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