A jury Friday acquitted W.R. Grace & Company and three of its former executives of having knowingly exposed mine workers and residents of Libby, Montana, to asbestos.
For much of the last century, people in the small town of Libby, Montana, were surrounded by toxic asbestos. It covered patches of grass, dusted the tops of cars and drifted through the air in a hazy smoke that became a part of their daily lives.
W.R. Grace & Co. and seven of the corporation's executives were indicted Monday for engaging in a long-running conspiracy to "knowingly release" hazardous asbestos fibers that placed the entire town of Libby, Montana, "in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury," the Justice Department announced.
IF YOU'RE LIKE MOST managers, you know you've hired some pretty smart people. Still, the suggestion boxes you have scattered around the place are gathering nothing but cobwebs, and in the daily rus...
A solution to the 20-year-long asbestos mess may finally be in the works. As FORTUNE explained last March (see "The $200 Billion Miscarriage of Justice" on fortune.com), trial lawyers have pitted p...
Think of it as a fitting start to one of the holiest months of the year. Like the plagues visited upon Pharaoh, each day in the first week of April seemed to bring word of another financial calamit...
When it comes to profits per employee, which FORTUNE 500 company is the best performer? This year's Golden Payroll Award goes to Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage purchaser, which earns...
Every year the FORTUNE 500 has a new look. Growing companies move onto the list, while some others slip off. So, too, we make some changes ourselves, refining rules when appropriate, or even castin...
Nobody loves a fink. A snitch. A rat. Well, maybe not. But why then are hundreds of companies rushing to install anonymous hotlines to enable tattlers to tell their tales? Why are companies appoint...
Stocks of companies based in Miami outperformed those of 23 other metropolitan areas in the first quarter of 1995, according to the exclusive MONEY/ Nordby Cities Index. The Florida city's 12 stock...
ANOTHER WAVE of consolidation is washing over the health care industry, this time in the burgeoning $30 billion home care market. The industry's growth has been fueled by cost-conscious hospitals, ...
Rarely since the advent of cellophane in 1923 has the packaging industry come up with so many new materials and designs. Today's high-tech flexible packages can look better than traditional bottles...
THE LONGEST-RUNNING act in chief execudom is taking final bows. J. Peter Grace, who in 1945 became CEO of W.R. Grace & Co., the chemicals company founded by his grandfather, relinquished his CEO ti...
THE FORTUNE 500 SPECIAL REPORT 174 POISED FOR A COMEBACK Look past an accounting change that clobbered the 500's 1992 earnings for the real news: dazzling new efficiencies and earnings prospects. b...
He once spent a year at Juilliard, following an early dream of becoming a concert pianist. But now Robert Beckwitt, 34, makes sweet music pursuing a different aim: to give investors in his $3.5 bil...
Fortune: HOTELS SLICE CHEFSupdated: Mon Nov 04 1991 00:01:00
A comfortable bed and a clean room, yes. But don't be surprised if some of the other niceties you've come to expect from hotels are missing next time you check in. For example, don't look for a sho...
Meet the Rossi family of Boonville, California, who keep busy running the local hardware store and pushing shareholder causes. The Rossis, who between them have investments in more than 50 companie...
The very, very rich will never be quite like you and me, but at least the gap isn't growing so fast. The average entrant on FORTUNE's fourth annual listing of the world's billionaires has about $2....
In theory we're all supposed to be doing business from the comfort of our offices by phone, fax, and PC these days, but many managers report that they're spending more time in airplane seats than e...
JUST THINK. Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse wrote ''Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off'' 30 years ago. That was before commercial fax machines, cellular phones, Concordes, beepers, laptop compu...
Fortune: NOW HEAR THIS updated: Mon Aug 28 1989 00:01:00
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, 43, Republican Congressman from Connecticut, to William M. Taylor, who acknowledged receiving more than $500,000 in cash and property from developers seeking housing benefits fro...
PSST, BUDDY, want a hot tip on the stock market? Well, whenever a company adopts a restricted-stock plan for its executives, you get out of that stock fast and invest in some other company that doe...
J. Peter Grace, longtime chief executive of W.R. Grace Co., made headlines in 1984 when the commission he headed came up with 2,478 ways to reduce federal waste, to the tune of $424 billion over a ...
INVESTING Q. I recently purchased Citicorp stock directly from the company, without brokers' fees. Do other firms offer such direct purchases? Erik Schneider Sacramento
Money Magazine: PROFITS IN HIDDEN VALUESupdated: Mon Dec 01 1986 00:01:00
Since the details of tax reform became known last August, dealmakers have been rushing to complete as many as 300 corporate takeovers and restructurings worth about $5 billion before Dec. 31. After...
Fortune: NOW HEAR THISupdated: Mon Nov 24 1986 00:01:00
J. PETER GRACE, 73, chairman of W.R. Grace, a possible takeover target, complaining about negative press reports: ''They wait until our fertilizer business is in the pits, and it is horribly in the...
PROTECTIONISM is one of those viruses that is never quite licked. It recedes into the tissue only to flare up again in time of stress. So with the U.S. facing another trade deficit of $150 billion ...
W.R. Grace's restaurants managed to serve up respectable profits even as competitors struggled (FORTUNE, December 9, 1985). In May, Grace announced that it will sell 51% of its restaurant business ...
Virtually everyone assumes that top executives cannot afford the time to write speeches, articles, press statements, or even their autobiographies. Public relations people welcome this belief becau...
CHIEF EXECUTIVES on lobbying missions are almost as common as tourists on Capitol Hill. Effective ones are a lot rarer. Here is a list of the best of the bunch, based on interviews with dozens of l...
Long jeered as mediocre money managers, banks have stacked up rather well in recent years against other kinds of institutional investors. In the two years that Stephen Timbers, 41, has been pilotin...
Fortune: Yankee come homeupdated: Mon Feb 03 1986 00:01:00
Calling Libya ''a threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,'' President Reagan severed virtually all economic ties and impounded Libyan assets in the U.S. Reagan cite...
BLUE-RIBBON PANELS come and go like freshmen Congressmen in Washington, but J. Peter Grace, chairman of W.R. Grace and head of the 1982 Grace commission to study waste in government, believes that ...
WAREHOUSE CLUBS -- those membership-only, deep-discount distributors that sprang to life in the past decade -- are running into their first formidable competition: each other. Attracted by huge sal...
EACH SPRING J. Peter Grace, the high-profile chief executive of W.R. Grace & Co. (1984 sales: $6.7 billion), escorts a dozen of his corporate officers on a whirlwind ten-day eating junket around th...
A FOREIGN GOVERNMENT supplies a factory with cheap oil or gas to make an energy-intensive product such as ammonia. The manufactured product grabs markets from U.S. companies. Is the foreign plant p...
CHIEF EXECUTIVE J. Peter Grace of W.R. Grace proudly gives the Grace Commission, also known as the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, a score of 9.9 on a scale of one to ten for eff...
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