(FORTUNE Magazine) – Takeovers were once straightforward confrontations between two companies: a buyer and a target. But nowadays one bidder attracts another and the action turns into an auction. When the British-Dutch giant Unilever put Richardson- Vicks into play with bids of $54, $56, and then $60 a share, Richardson- Vicks, the maker of VapoRub and Oil of Olay, went looking for a white knight. Pfizer and Colgate-Palmolive made pitches, but the winner was Procter & Gamble, which raised the ante to $69 a share. For P&G Chief Executive John Smale, owning Richardson-Vicks will be like a homecoming: he broke into the consumer goods business in 1949 as an advertising sales trainee at Vick Chemical Co., a forerunner of Richardson-Vicks. General Foods tried to get an auction going but a big spender scared off everybody else. Takeover speculation had been buzzing for months and the stock climbed from $69.50 at the end of May to $110.25 the day before the suitor was identified in late September. Wall Streeters thought Unilever and PepsiCo were eyeing General Foods, but the winner was Philip Morris, the tobacco, beer, and soda pop conglomerate. Cash-rich Philip Morris agreed to shell out $5.75 billion, or $120 a share, in the largest U.S. merger ever outside the oil industry.