¶ … Robert Slater This report is based upon the book Titans of Takeover by Robert Slater. This book was originally published in 1987 by Englewood Cliffs, and then re-published and copyrighted in 1999 by Beard Books.

Introduction of the Author

The book Titans of Takeover was authored by Robert Slater, who is famous for his strong stand against President Ronald Reagan's attempts to make the U.S. marketplace a free economy by doing away with the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Laws. He proved to America that although such a move would appear to yield immediate benefits by putting the nation's economy on the map against the vibrant economies that gave no room to antitrust laws, it would, to an equally large extent, produce devastating outcomes on the economy in the long run. Slater has authored a couple of other bestselling business books and authored several articles on the Wall Street Journal, in addition to being a Newsweek Magazine, UPI, and Time Magazine journalist.

Body of the Review

This is one of the most well-written, and clearly-thought out books I have come across. People would probably think that the book's intent was to make a fast-buck out of the corporate raiders, but I beg to strongly disagree with this thought. The author clearly stipulates that the welfare of the American...

His core intention, he posits, is to counter the selective positive arguments that the advocates of mergers used in order to mislead the American public, which was caught between a pool of influential businessmen controlling the entire market and fully driven by the profit motive, and a Reagan administration that had thrown its full weight behind the merger mania, just so to make the American economy more vibrant and recognizable.
The author at one point makes reference to a public speech, neatly summed-up and attractively-packaged by Bruce Wasserstein - an investor banker and merger mania supporter, expressing that mergers do nothing but yield a streak of economic benefits, including scale economies, reduced administration overhead costs, lower chances of corporate failure as a result of freshly-induced leadership, and so on. The speech intentionally evades a mention of the negative effects that were likely to accrue from the same. With this, Wasserstein would amass lots of public support and earn himself, as well as his inner circle, the reputation of a friendly buyer.

The author, representing the naysayers, puts forth a strong argument against the pro-takeover argument that mergers are a vibrant contributor to job creation. He expresses that as a corporation got larger and larger due to…