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An entertaining summary of the broad reshaping of U.S. corporate finance in the last decade and a half.The late 1980s saw a huge wave of corporate leveraging. The U.S. financial landscape was dominated by a series of high-stakes leveraged buyouts as firms replaced their equity with new fixed debt obligations. Cash-financed acquisitions and defensive share repurchases also decapitalized corporations. This trend culminated in the sensational debt-financed bidding for RJR-Nabisco, the largest leveraged buyout of all time, before dramatically reversing itself in the early 1990s with a rapid return to equity.This entertaining summary of the broad reshaping of U.S. corporate finance in the last decade and a half looks at three major issues: why corporations leveraged up in the first place, why and how the leverage wave came to an end, and what policy lessons are to be drawn.Using the Minsky-Kindleberger model as a framework, the authors interpret the rise and fall of leveraging as a financial market mania. In the course of chronicling the return to equity in the 1990s, they address a number of important corporate finance questions: How important was the return to equity in relieving corporations' debt burdens? How did the return to equity affect the ability of young high-tech firms to finance themselves without selling out to foreign firms?

Leveraged buyouts --- Consolidation and merger of corporations --- Corporations --- History --- Finance --- Business corporations --- C corporations --- Corporations, Business --- Corporations, Public --- Limited companies --- Publicly held corporations --- Publicly traded corporations --- Public limited companies --- Stock corporations --- Subchapter C corporations --- Acquisition of corporations --- Acquisitions and mergers --- Amalgamation of corporations --- Business combinations --- Business mergers --- Buyouts, Corporate --- Corporate acquisitions --- Corporate buyouts --- Corporate mergers --- Corporate takeovers --- Fusion of corporations --- Hostile takeovers of corporations --- M & A (Mergers and acquisitions of corporations) --- Merger of corporations --- Mergers and acquisitions of corporations --- Mergers, Corporate --- Takeovers, Corporate --- Buyouts, Leveraged --- LBOs (Corporations) --- Leveraged buy-outs --- Consolidation --- Mergers --- Business enterprises --- Corporate power --- Disincorporation --- Stocks --- Trusts, Industrial --- Corporate reorganizations --- Golden parachutes (Executive compensation) --- Industrial concentration --- ECONOMICS/Finance