At that time Dancer Fitzgerald Sample was the thirteenth largest advertising agency in the US with billings of $876M and clients including Procter & Gamble, General Mills, Toyota, Sara Lee and RJR Nabisco.
On November 8, 1990 Hearst Corporation acquired the remaining 20% stake of ESPN Inc. from RJR Nabisco for a price estimated between $165 million and $175 million.
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.
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Bryan Burrough and John Helyar published Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, a successful book about the events which was later turned into a television movie for HBO.
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F. Ross Johnson (born 1931), Canadian businessman and former CEO of RJR Nabisco.
The Argosy team had been involved in many of the most prominent high yield financings of the preceding two decades, for companies including RJR Nabisco, Beatrice Foods, and Storer Communications.