George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

ock-bottom prices after a buyout. Poison pills were invented by New York lawyer Marty
Lipton, and did not deter raider Sir James Goldsmith from seizing control of Crown
Zellerbach in the mid-1980's, although Goldsmith's costs were increased.
Bush also railed against "golden parachutes," which provide lucrative settlements for top
executives who are ousted as the result of a takeover:
I am frankly a bit skeptical about claims that these so-called 'defensive' tactics are necessary to
encourage long-term investment. Studies suggest that prices of stock reflect information that is
publicly available. Sometimes it seems that managers use these tactics to save themselves from the
competitive pressures of the market for corporate control, not to protect the interests of the
shareholders.
Bush was clearly hostile to any federal restrictions on hostile takeovers. If anything, he
was closer to those who demanded that the federal government stop the states from
passing laws that interfere with LBO activity. For that notorious corporate raider and
disciple of Chairman Mao Liedtke, T. Boone Pickens, the message was clear:
I know that Vice President Bush is a free enterpriser. I don't think there is any doubt if you look at
what Vice President Bush has said and what Gov. Dukakis has said that Bush is pro-stockholder. I
would say Dukakis is pro-management. *
The expectations of Pickens and his ilk were not disappointed by the Bush cabinet that
took office in January, 1989. The new Secretary of the Treasury, Bush crony Nicholas
Brady, was only a supporter of leveraged buyouts; he had been one of the leading
practitioners of the mergers and acquisitions game during his days in Wall Street as a
partner of the Harriman-allied investment firm of Dillon Read.
The family of Nicholas Brady has been allied for most of this century with the Bush-
Walker clan. During his Wall Street career at Dillon, Read, Brady, like Bush, cultivated
the self-image of the patrician banker, becoming a member of the New York Jockey Club
and racing his own thorougbred horses at the New York tracks once presided over by
George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush. Brady, like Bush, is a member of the
Bohemian Club of San Francisco and attended the Bohemian Grove every summer.
Inside the Bohemian Grove oligarchic pantheon, Brady enjoys the special distinction of
presiding over the prestigious Mandalay Camp (or cabin complex), the one habitually
attended by Henry Kissinger, and sometimes frequented by Gerald Ford. When Senator
Harrison Williams of New Jersey was driven out of office by the FBI's "Abscam"
entrapment operation, Brady was appointed to fill out the remainder of the term to which
Williams had been elected. Brady is also reportedly a victim of dyslexia.
At the Regency in Lower Manhattan, Brady rubbed elbows each morning at breakfast
with Joe Flom and the rest of the the Skadden Arps crowd, Arthur F. Long of D.F. King
and Co., Marty Lipton, Arthur Liman, Felix Rohatyn, Boesky's friend Marty Siegel, and
Joe Perella of First Boston.
Brady's LBO experience goes back to the 1985 battle for control of Unocal, the former
Union Oil Company. T. Boone Pickens and Mesa Petroleum attempted a hostile takeover