Corporate Restructuring

Written for financial and management executives, this volume provides a comprehensive and detailed examination of the restructuring of American business which has resulted from a spate of large-scale mergers, acquisitions, takeovers, and buyouts. Alkhafaji explores the reasons for the increasing popularity of takeovers, mergers, and buyouts; who benefits from and who is affected by these strategies; who loses and who wins in the process; the international aspects of corporate restructuring; and the future implications for financial and senior managers.

This devastating critique by the authors of The Deindustrialization of America documents how the economic policies of the Reagan era have damaged the American standard of living and suggests how this trend may be reversed.

In this book, well-known corporate financial advisor Joel Stern moderates six roundtable discussions among distinguished investment bankers, corporate executives, and financial economists. Discussions focus on topics of strong current interest: mergers and acquisitions, executive compensation, corporate restructuring, capital structure, dividend policy, and investor relations.

This book illuminates what is really happening in the American workplace. The contributors explain how the widespread restructuring of American firms--usually resulting in a reduction of the workforce to cut costs--has had a profound impact on the lives of workers. The book explains how the new relationship requires high skill levels, but does not provide training for them. Workers themselves now must take charge of their personal development instead of relying on their employers. Their alienation from their firms is compounded by the large disparity between the pay of top managers and that of workers. The future is uncertain, but the authors argue that the traditional relationship between employer and employees will continue to erode.

Turbulence--rapid and sometimes tumultuous changes--has characterized the labor markets of the 1970's and 1980's. Turbulent competitive conditions have cut sharply into profits and have forced downsizings and radical readjustments in America's workplaces. Workplace turbulence has resulted in lost jobs, declining incomes, and falling productivity for American labor. From the perspectives of business and labor, turbulence and its consequences is the key human resources issue for the last part of the twentieth century. In Turbulence in the American Workplace, a distinguished group of experts forcefully and convincingly argue that the human resources capacity of the private sector is the first line of defense against turbulence and is of equal importance to public sector education and training programs. The authors--including Kathleen Christensen, Patricia M. Flynn, Douglas T. Hall, Harry C. Katz, Jeffrey H. Keefe, Christopher J. Ruhm, Andrew M. Sum, and Michael Useem--effectively demonstrate how global competition, deregulation, and technological change are creating hard choices for employers that will alter both the living standards of workers and the performance of American industry in the coming decades. This illuminating work will be of significant value to business school faculty, corporate strategic planners, and general managers, as well as students and professionals interested in the areas of public policy, industrial relations, education, and labor studies.

Firms within the same competitive environment (industry) respond in different ways to changing environmental (competitive) conditions. The authors of this book argue that the strategy field has not found answers to the questions that flow from this observation. They answer these questions by using what they call a "cognitively anchored theory of strategic change."

Presented by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, this much-needed resource offers a wealth of theoretical information, best business practices, and winning techniques for executives who must guide their companies through the often difficult processes of mergers, acquisitions, downsizings, and other transitions. Written by top experts in the field, Resizing the Organization is a field guide for applying industrial and organizational psychology theories and practices to the management of change strategies. Contributors to Resizing the Organization David T. Bastien Thomas J. Bergmann Scott M. Brooks Anthony F. Buono Wayne F. Cascio Jeffrey Crandell Kenneth P. De Meuse Daniel C. Feldman Emily L. Hause Todd J. Hostager Jill R. Kickul Scott W. Lester Raymond G. Lorenz Mitchell Lee Marks Kathryn D. McKee Philip H. Mirvis Jessica L. Saltz Roger D. Sommer Ronny Vansteenkiste Jack W. Wiley Nina E. Woodard Clifford E. Young

Junk bonds burst into the nation's headlines as the fastest growing and most controversial financial instruments of the 1980s. Branded with an unflattering nickname, these high yield securities were tarnished in the public eye by waves of negative publicity. Critics cast the financiers and entrepreneurs who pioneered their use as symbols of a decade of greed and financial excess. By the end of the 1980s, the heyday of junk bonds had seemingly come to a close with the conviction of junk bond pioneer Michael Milken and the bankruptcy of Drexel Burnham Lambert, the brokerage that dominated the high yield market. But the controversy surrounding junk bonds continues. Now, in Junk Bonds, business professor Glenn Yago turns the tables on conventional wisdom about this new financial technology. He offers the first systematic examination of the facts about high yield securities. His analysis provides hard evidence that demystifies junk bonds and explodes many of the popular myths that surround them. Junk Bonds sheds light on the role of high yield financing in what Yago calls the democratization of capital. Before the advent of junk bonds, only companies with an "investment grade" rating--five percent of the 23,000 American companies with sales over $35 million--had access to long term capital. In effect, the author argues, 95 percent of American companies were denied the means to finance growth and business development. Yago shows how junk bonds changed all that, breathing life into thousands of American companies that had been shunned by the capital markets. His research demonstrates that these "junk" companies outperformed many Fortune 500 firms in job creation, product development, sales, and business innovation. The real contribution of junk bonds, according to Yago, was to improve the productivity and competitiveness of American business by restructuring companies in the wake of the corporate conglomerations of the 1960s and 1970s. His findings show that divestitures by companies financed with high yield bonds were not necessarily destructive. Many sold-off units flourished as independent enterprises at a time when numerous "investment grade" companies stagnated or closed plants or fired workers. This restructuring of corporate America has enabled businesses to compete in a changing international environment, benefiting managers, workers, stockholders, and investors alike. Junk Bonds provides readers with a scholarly analysis that shears away the hype and hysteria that often accompany rapid change. And at a time when Wall Street is under greater scrutiny than at any time since the Depression, this provocative study provides a timely and thoughtful contribution to the debate surrounding junk bonds.