New Players Join the Takeover Game; Well-Financed Companies, Not Raiders, Call the Shots as the Acquisition Field Changes
Fueled by lower stock prices and renewed confidence in the economy, the corporate takeover market is heating up. Just three months after Black Monday, bids and counterbids are being announced daily.</br></br>But the players are changing from the takeover boom of recent years. Most of the efforts in the current wave have been mounted by corporations rather than by corporate raiders.</br></br>Already this year, several multibillion-dollar bids have been launched, and a number of smaller offers-primarily hostile-have been made.</br></br>Among the largest deals is Eastman Kodak Co.'s planned $5.1 billion acquisition of Sterling Drug Inc.-a merger that Sterling accepted Jan. 22 to ward off a takeover by the giant Swiss pharmaceutical company Hoffman-LaRoche.</br></br>The Canadian real-estate development firm Campeau Corp., which in late 1986 took over the Allied Stores Corp. department-store chain, has made an unsolicited $4.2 billion offer to buy Federated Department Stores Inc., the parent of Bloomingdale's and I. Magnin.