|
View the H-Business Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Business's October 2009 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-Business's October 2009 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-Business home page.
[Submitted to the list by Ryan Murphy <murph466@umn.edu>. - ed.] Hello- I was forwarded a post on this list-serve from Mitchell Koffman from Arizona State. I am a PhD candidate in American Studies at Minnesota who is doing a lot of work on airline mergers between 1970 and the present. Here is my quick response to Mitchell's earlier query about small companies acquiring large ones. Feel free to contact me for more information.... The best example from the airlines of a small company acquiring a much larger one would be the Texas International-Continental merger in 1983. Corporate financier Frank Lorenzo bought Texas International in the late 1970s, and then basically used it as a vehicle to stage a corporate raid on Continental. After he won the battle to control the Continental board, Lorenzo ultimately merged Continental into Texas International (though they then operated as Continental much like America West operates as USAirways). Workers struck Continental after Lorenzo moved to impose deep wage cuts, which precipitated the first Continental bankruptcy. Anyway - this is an artifact from the "junk bond" era of the mid-1980s, but it is one of the only comparable situations in the airlines. The others would likely be among the sub-contracted airlines - like the recent acquisition of Frontier by the subcontracting company "Republic Airways Group." Again not a perfect parallel as Republic is actually a holding company for several subcontractors. But it would be useful to research some of the legal background on it. Hope this helps! Ryan Patrick Murphy -- David A. Kirsch Senior Editor, H-Business
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|