Nabisco Holdings Corp

Nabisco Group Holdings Corp. invited Carl Icahn to work with its financial advisors, a day after the financier sweetened his bid for the company to about $5.2 billion. Nabisco Group hired Warburg Dillon Read and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter on Monday to help find ways to boost its stock, such as a sale of the company or its 80.6% stake in Nabisco Holdings Corp., the maker of Ritz crackers and Oreo cookies.

Financier Carl Icahn, who has tried repeatedly to wrest control of Nabisco Group Holdings Corp. in recent years, said Thursday that he plans to buy a $1.3-billion stake in the company and push for its sale. Icahn said he is prepared to offer $13 each for 100 million shares of the company, whose main asset is an 80.5% stake in Nabisco Holdings Corp., maker of Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers and Life Savers candies.

Nabisco Holdings Corp. agreed to buy struggling Favorite Brands International Inc., maker of Jet Puffed marshmallows and Trolli and Farley's candies, for $475 million in cash. Bannockburn, Ill.-based Favorite Brands, which has annual sales of about $700 million, filed in March for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The deal is subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and to regulatory review. Meanwhile, Favorite Brands said it would welcome other offers.

Icahn Tries Again: Financier Carl Icahn today will try once again to take over RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp.'s board in a bid to force it to spin off its Nabisco foods business instead of its U.S. cigarette unit, a move RJR's chief executive promptly rejected as impractical. Icahn's bid--his third in less than five years--comes just two days after RJR announced plans to sell its ailing international tobacco operations and then spin off its domestic cigarette business, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.

Nabisco Holdings Corp. on Monday unveiled a sweeping restructuring that includes shutting some plants and warehouses, firing about 3,100 workers and sharply hiking promotional spending. The nation's largest maker of cookies and crackers said it plans to take a second-quarter restructuring charge of about $268 million, or three times estimated earnings, and take another pretax charge of $118 million over the next year as it reduces its work force by 6%.

A dissident group of shareholders said Tuesday that it had won majority backing for its nonbinding proposal that RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. immediately spin off its food business. The results, if they hold up on closer examination, are a blow to the tobacco company, which had vigorously campaigned against the proposal. RJR had said late last week that its own preliminary count showed the proposal failed to get a majority vote.