Cobb County , Georgia
Where was the headquarter of RJR Nabisco located from 1987 to 1989?
RJR Nabisco RJR Nabisco , Inc. , was an American conglomerate , selling tobacco and food products , headquartered in the Calyon Building in Midtown Manhattan , New York City . RJR Nabisco stopped operating as a single entity in 1999 ; however , both RJR ( as R . J . Reynolds Tobacco Company ) and Nabisco ( now part of Mondelēz International ) still exist . History . RJR Nabisco was formed in 1985 by the merger of Nabisco Brands and R.J . Reynolds Tobacco Company . In 1988 RJR Nabisco was purchased by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co . in what was at the time the largest leveraged buyout in history . In 1999 , due to concerns about tobacco lawsuit liabilities , the tobacco business was spun off into a separate company , and RJR Nabisco was renamed Nabisco Holdings Corporation . Nabisco is currently owned by Mondelēz International Inc . RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp . ( NYSE : NGH ) was the parent company of RJR Nabisco , Inc . After the food and tobacco businesses separated in June 1999 , Nabisco Group Holdings Corp . owned 80% of RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. , which was the parent company of Nabisco , Inc . Formation . R . J . Reynolds Tobacco Company was founded in Winston-Salem , North Carolina , in 1875 and changed its name to R . J . Reynolds Industries , Inc . in 1970 . It became RJR Nabisco on April 25 , 1986 after the companys $4.9 billion purchase , and earlier 1.9 billion stock swap , of Nabisco Brands Inc . in 1985 . Headquarters move . In August 1986 , the RJR Nabisco board announced that F . Ross Johnson would replace J . Tylee Wilson as head of the company effective January 1 , 1987 . Soon after that , Johnson , believing bucolic Winston-Salem did not have the right image for a world-class company , began looking at other possible headquarters cities . After ruling out New York City and Dallas , the company decided on Atlanta because it was nouveau riche and overbuilt . On January 15 , 1987 , the RJR Nabisco board approved a headquarters move from Winston-Salem to Cobb County , Georgia , north of Atlanta , where the company had rented space . The move would affect 250 to 300 employees , while Winston-Salem would still have 14,000 people working for the company . RJR Nabisco donated the 519,000-square-foot World Headquarters Building to Wake Forest University but continued to use it until the September 1987 move . Later , RJR Nabiscos Planters-Life Savers Division moved to the former headquarters building . The leveraged buyout . The RJR Nabisco leveraged buyout was , at the time , widely considered to be the preeminent example of corporate and executive greed . Bryan Burrough and John Helyar published , a successful book about the events which was later turned into a television movie for HBO . Ross Johnson was the President and CEO of RJR Nabisco at the time of the leveraged buyout and Henry Kravis was the managing partner at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co . The leveraged buyout was in the amount of $25 billion , and the battle for control took place between October and November 1988 . Although KKR eventually took control of RJR Nabisco , RJR management and Shearson Lehman Hutton had originally announced that they would take RJR Nabisco private at $75 per share . A fierce series of negotiations and proposals ensued which involved nearly all of the major private equity players of the day , including Morgan Stanley , Goldman Sachs , Salomon Brothers , First Boston , Wasserstein Perella & Co. , Forstmann Little , Shearson Lehman Hutton , and Merrill Lynch . Once put in play by Shearson Lehman Hutton and RJR management , almost every major Wall Street firm involved in M&A launched frenzied , literal last-minute bids in a fog of incomplete or misleading information . KKR quickly introduced a tender offer to obtain RJR Nabisco for $90 per share—a price that enabled it to proceed without the approval of RJR Nabiscos management . RJRs management team , working with Shearson Lehman Hutton and Salomon Brothers , submitted a bid of $112 , a figure they felt certain would enable it to outflank any response by Kravis . KKRs final bid of $109 , while a lower dollar figure , was ultimately accepted by the board of directors . It was accepted because KKRs offer was guaranteed whereas managements lacked a reset , meaning that the final share price might have been lower than their professed $112 per share . Additionally , many in RJRs board of directors had grown concerned at recent disclosures of Johnsons unprecedented golden parachute deal . Time Magazine featured Johnson on the cover of its December 1988 issue along with the headline A Game of Greed : This man could pocket $100 million from the largest corporate takeover in history . Has the buyout craze gone too far? . KKRs offer was welcomed by the board , and , to some observers , it appeared that their elevation of the reset issue as a deal-breaker in KKRs favor was little more than an excuse to reject Johnsons higher payout of $112 per share . Johnson received compensation worth more than $60 million from the buyout , then left in February 1989 . In March 1989 , Louis V . Gerstner of American Express became the new head of RJR Nabisco . After the KKR buyout . On April 27 , 1989 , RJR Nabisco announced it would move its headquarters to the New York City area . As a result of the acquisition , RJR Nabisco divested the following divisions : - Nabiscos UK operations ( including Smiths and Walkers ) , Belin of France , and Saiwa of Italy were sold to BSN . Smiths and Walkers were swiftly resold to PepsiCo . - Chun King was sold to Yeo Hiap Seng . - Associated Biscuits International ( consisting of 38% of Indias Britannia and 40% of Pakistans English Biscuit Manufacturers ) to Britannia Industries . - Fresh Del Monte Produce was sold to Polly Peck . - Del Monte Foods was sold to Merrill Lynch , Citicorp Venture Capital , and Kikkoman . Del Montes Asia operations ( outside the Philippines ) were separately sold to Kikkoman . - The companys 20% stake in ESPN Inc . was sold to Hearst Communications . Another major consequence of the buyout was that according to United States Department of Labor , in its report American Workplace , over 2,000 workers subsequently lost their jobs , which 72% eventually replaced , but earning less than half of their previous incomes , suggesting that it took most of those who lost their jobs an average of 5.6 months to find new employment . On March 21 , 1991 , RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp . became a publicly traded stock . In March 1999 , RJR Nabisco announced the sale of the international division of R . J . Reynolds Tobacco , and in June of that year , the company sold the remainder of R . J . Reynolds Tobacco to stockholders . The parent company became Nabisco Group Holdings and owned 80.5 percent of Nabisco Holdings . In 2000 , Philip Morris bought Nabisco Holdings . Soon after that , R . J . Reynolds Tobacco Holdings , Inc. , first traded in June 1999 , announced the acquisition of Nabisco Group Holdings . The deal was completed in December 2000 . Advertising controversy . In April 1988 , RJR Nabisco fired the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency after their Northwest Airlines ad introducing the airlines in-flight smoking ban . This was despite the agency only being contracted for Nabisco products , not any tobacco products . External links . - RJR Nabisco ( Archive )