PREVIEW / Some of the Business and Economic Events Happening Today
Icahn Tries Again: Financier Carl Icahn today will try once again to take over RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp.’s board in a bid to force it to spin off its Nabisco foods business instead of its U.S. cigarette unit, a move RJR’s chief executive promptly rejected as impractical.
Icahn’s bid--his third in less than five years--comes just two days after RJR announced plans to sell its ailing international tobacco operations and then spin off its domestic cigarette business, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., as a free-standing company.
Analysts said Icahn believes his approach--setting up the foods business, Nabisco Holdings Corp., as the free-standing company--better protects it from the costly legal liability facing RJR from scores of anti-tobacco lawsuits.
Icahn and other investors have agitated repeatedly to force management to spin off the foods business in the years since RJR was the subject of a $29-billion leveraged buyout in the late 1980s. He long has said he believes Nabisco, maker of Oreo cookies, Planters nuts and Grey Poupon mustard, is handicapped by its connection to a cigarette business beset by a host of financial, legal and public relations woes. RJR owns 80.5% of Nabisco. Icahn owns 7.7% of RJR.
RJR responded that Icahn’s proposal was not feasible and that the company would proceed with the sale of its international tobacco unit to Japan Tobacco Inc. for about $8 billion.
Icahn was not immediately available for comment and a spokesman declined to elaborate on his plans.
He said in a statement shareholders should have the chance to choose which would be the best way to split the company. He said that by today--the proxy filing deadline ahead of RJR’s annual meeting May 12--he will propose a directors slate, including himself, that would be committed to spinning off Nabisco.
“By spinning off tobacco, the parent still has tobacco liability,” said Mark Minichiello of Spin-Off Advisors in Chicago. “By spinning off Nabisco, the unit isn’t part of the tobacco portion any longer.”
RJR’s shares closed unchanged at $30 in composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
