Nabisco CEO Schaeberle dies at 88

By The Dartmouth Web Staff | 10/12/11 3:29pm

Robert Schae­berle ’45, who led Nabisco Inc into a stan­dard-set­ting 1981 merger with Stan­dard Brands Inc, died at 88 in Ex­eter, NH on Sep­tem­ber 29th. Schnae­berle’s ca­reer at Nabisco began with a paper he wrote in an eco­nom­ics class at Dart­mouth, ac­cord­ing to a 1980 Forbes mag­a­zine in­ter­view. Schae­berle ran across the Na­tional Bis­cuit Com­pany – which even­tu­ally be­came Nabisco – while flip­ping through a Moody’s pub­li­ca­tion and re­searched it for the class. He began work­ing for the com­pany after grad­u­a­tion and be­came chair­man and CEO in 1973.

After the fa­mous 1981 merger Schae­berle at­tempted to share power with F. Ross John­son at the new Nabisco Brands Inc. as the com­pany’s chair­man and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fice. While their re­la­tion­ship frayed, Schae­berle stayed on through the ac­qui­si­tion of Nabisco Brands by R.J. Rynolds for $6.25 bil­lion in 1985. In 1986 Schae­berle re­tired after 40 years of work for the com­pany.