Word: antitrusters
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...Nixon Administration, which seems determined to prove itself tougher on antitrust policy than the Democrats were, has lost an important round in its fight against corporate bigness. Last week a federal court refused to stop International Telephone & Telegraph, the largest conglomerate, from going ahead with one of the biggest mergers in U.S. history-the acquisition of Hartford Fire Insurance Co. The combination would raise ITT's assets by 50%, to more than $6 billion...
Changing the Standards. The Justice Department's request for a preliminary injunction to stop the merger was denied by Judge William H. Timbers of the federal district court in New Haven. He rejected the trustbusters' argument that economic concentration is illegal under the Clayton Antitrust Act. Timbers ruled that the law bars only mergers that lessen competition and said that if the standard is to be changed, it ought to be done by Congress rather than the courts. Attorney General John Mitchell finds alarming the fact that the 200 largest U.S. companies control 58% of the manufacturing assets...
...after the court decision. In a speech in Manhattan, he called Mitchell's statistics "carefully selected but unfortunately misleading." He pointed out that the asset concentration among the top 140 companies in 1963 was the same as it had been in 1932. Geneen also contended that the real antitrust issue is the specific amount of concentration of power within an industry and that the conglomerate approach of buying into many industries does not involve that kind of concentration...
...merger three months ago, also in New Haven. ITT executives, who in the meantime will go ahead and take over Hartford Fire, are indignant over the Justice Department's determination to press the case. They say that the Hartford acquisition carefully adhered to the Johnson Administration's antitrust guidelines-and they do not like having the rules changed in the middle of the game...
...Antitrust law is being invoked by two Chicago aldermen in a $3 billion air-pollution suit against General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. An estimated 60% of Chicago's air pollution is caused by automobile exhaust, and Lawyer Jerome Torshen plans to attack "the heart of the problem." He hopes to use the results of a special federal investigation prepared by the Justice Department for a similar antitrust suit in California, which charged that the auto companies conspired to keep anti-pollution devices off their cars. The Government recently allowed the companies to settle that case out of court after...