johnny kat
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It's that darn CAPITALISM that's causing all this consternation.
Its Official....UsAirways makes formal 8.6 billion proposal
- Thread starter usfliboi
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In the Piedmont US Air merger, Piedmont had a deal set with Norfolk Southern to purchase her. Along comes US Air in the 11 hour and makes an outrageous offer and steals the deal. They had to hocked everything in sight to get the cash. Piedmont stock holders laughed all the way to the bank .... and the employees of the combined companies paid a horrible price for many years to come. Could it happen again?
wings396
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You are spot on with this post, sad but true. I had also heard that N&S was entertaining the idea of purchasing TWA, and combining it with PI at one point. If you recall, this all came into play when Ichan made a late attempt to buy US because he was pissed that they went after PI taking them out of the N&S picture. I know that it all sounds far fetched, but I knew a few people that were involved with the merger details at the time, and a few of them told me the same story. Also heard that Tom Davis was not in favor of the merger with US, and wasn't even present for the BOD vote. He was considering an attempt to foil the merger, but was advised that US would possibly
part-out PI in order to recover their initial investment.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out .... a friendly merger as planned by Parker and the unions would benefit the new company and employees going forward. If Horton forces a hostile bid it benefits only those trying to cash out with the merger.
I have a question here... I think that N/S owned control of PI Stock. When N/S came on hard times,
they decided to dump the stock.... hence.... USAir wants to merge... PI had no control of this as N/S was the player and owned PI... ... I don't think Tom Davis had any control, however he wanted to look after his PI employes... Tom Davis was the best!
I believe it was call Norfolk and Western back then. They were planning to buy Piedmont, then Western Airlines and merge them. N/W owned a marine shipping company and had bought into North American Van Lines. They were planning to be a complete transportation company. They already owned a 20% stake in Piedmont and promised Bill Howard that they would bid as high as they needed to to maintain control. Piedmont had become very successful in BWI and SYR and US Air decided they needed to act. All this caught Carl Icahn's (TWA) attention and he became a player. In the end US Airways paid way to much for Piedmont, and then had no real plan once they got it. N/W told Howard that US Air was bidding unrealistically and if they paid that much they wouldn't be able to get Western Airlines for the merger. So they took the money and ran .... Howard was furious. In the end PI stock holders were rich and the US Air and Piedmont employees were screwed.
