The Last Chapter: The Facts About the Last Days of Grumman

by Jake Bussolini

It was July 2, 1962, when Jake Bussolini first walked through the doors of Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation as their newest electrical engineer. As he was escorted to a plain gray desk that resembled the hundreds of other desks that cluttered the third floor, Bussolini never dreamed that over the next thirty-two years, he would not only help design and build the Lunar Module that delivered astronauts to the moon, but also climb the corporate ladder to become an integral part of an assignment that would lead Grumman in a startlingly different direction. As he leads others behind closed doors of both executive offices and the corporate board room during challenging times in the defense industry in the early 1990s, Bussolini discloses never-before-revealed details about how a friendly merger created to survive budget cuts slowly transformed into a hostile acquisition. While describing the tense events before, during, and after the acquisition, Bussolini divulges how activities initiated by an investment banker minutes before a final decision was to be made by the Board of Directors to approve the merger changed the course of the company's history, and the lives of its loyal employees forever. The Last Chapter shares the fascinating inside story of the 1994 acquisition of Grumman from a former company executive determined to document the final chapter in the history of a great corporation.

280 pages, Paperback

First published November 6, 2014

Reviews

[Glynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

My friend lent me this book. He said it would be a good read. I had my doubts because it seemed to be about mostly corporate executives and boardrooms and such, and I lived through a lot of the story contained in these pages.

At first I was bored. The first couple of chapters contained some tiny charts that were hard to read and the writing wasn’t excellent, but then things got very interesting. The writer’s style was entertaining and I found myself enjoying the book.

I learned a lot about the workings of big companies, the difference between a merger and a “hostile” takeover, and the pitfalls that can happen in the Aerospace industry. This book opened my eyes to another way of looking at the whole story of the last days of Grumman. I would like to have seen some notes and/or suggested further reading but that is only a small complaint.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the world of Aerospace. I especially recommend it to young executives in the Aerospace Industry today so that they may learn from the history and, as the author writes, avoid “making the same mistakes in the future.”

[William J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this over the Christmas break. For anyone interested in the aerospace industry, this is an interesting book. The author was at the heart of the Northrop Grumman merger or hostile takeover. As a California Northrop employee, I witnessed the combining of the two historic companies. As a Northrop Grumman employee transferred to a former Grumman facility in Florida, I am experiencing the cultural changes and and as I call it, the Californication of the New York state of mind.