How it started
Group
MacAndrews & Forbes & Co. was founded in 1850 by Edward MacAndrews and William Forbes, a distributor of licorice extract and chocolate.
In 1978, Perelman purchased a 40% stake in Cohen-Hatfield Jewelers, and in 1980, Perelman, through Cohen-Hatfield Jewelers, bought MacAndrews & Forbes & Co. Through the purchase, Cohen-Hatfield Jewelers was merged into what became MacAndrews & Forbes Group Inc.
Holdings
In 1983, Perelman formed MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc. Perelman started selling bonds to acquire the remaining 66% stake in MacAndrews & Forbes Group Inc. to take MacAndrews & Forbes Group Inc. private.
Also in 1983, MacAndrews acquired Technicolor Inc. Despite the bond debt, in 1984, MacAndrews & Forbes purchased Consolidated Cigar Holdings Ltd. from Gulf & Western Industries, in addition to Video Corporation of America. The Technicolor Inc. divisions were sold off and, in 1988, its core business was sold to Carlton Communications for 6.5 times the purchase price. Using the proceeds from the Technicolor division sell off, MacAndrews & Forbes purchased a 20 percent stake in Compact Video Inc., a television and film syndication company. Ronald Perelman's controlling buyout of Compact Video was in 1986.
From Wikipedia’s article on MacAndrews & Forbes, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2