Word: bendixes
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Coming soon . . . the blockbuster business epic of the year! See corporate giants devour one another in titanic clashes. See captains of industry race against midnight deadlines to save their power and prestige. Will Bill Agee of Bendix Corp. and his beautiful blond bride Mary escape the clutches of Martin Marietta Corp.'s menacing Tom Pownall? Will tough old Harry Gray of United Technologies foil their plans to find happiness in the embrace of Ed Hennessy of Allied Corp.? Find out in Takeover, the drama that asks the question: "Is this any way to run a company...
...began as a fairly straightforward corporate merger fight. But by last week the multiplying twists and turns in the convoluted takeover battle between Bendix Corp., the Michigan-based aerospace and auto-parts manufacturer, and Martin Marietta Corp., a leading defense contractor of Bethesda, Md., had become an embarrassing parody of Big Business in action. Seemingly unconcerned about the best interests of their stockholders or employees, some of America's top executives were threatening each other with multibillion-dollar stock ploys, while jetting cross-country for clandestine strategy sessions, tying up courtrooms from Michigan to Maryland and wasting millions...
...last Thursday, Martin Marietta, with 1981 sales of $3.3 billion, had acquired 46% of Bendix stock for some $900 million. But Bendix, with 1981 sales of $4.4 billion, had bought 70% of Marietta's shares for $1.2 billion. While Bendix and Marietta were scrapping, Allied Corp., a New Jersey-based conglomerate, with 1981 revenues of $6.4 billion, lumbered into the fray, offering in effect to take over both companies for $2.3 billion...
...other reasons usually proffered for takeovers don't wash here. Marietta wasn't yearning to be rescued from collapse--far from it. A Bendix-Marietta pairing apparently wouldn't have made for "stronger competition" or yielded "substantial economic efficiencies," as the skeptical Times observed. If anything, last month's corporate jockeying and the diverting effect it had on the stock market and the companies involved was downright inefficient...
...wake of last week's denouement, daily newspapers across the country editorialized that Bendix's shakedown cruise pointed up the need for stricter federal regulation. Undoubtedly true, but the recommendation is unrealistic in the Age of Reagan. More practically, the unseemly Bendix affair should provoke a little reassessment on the part of American industry, a realization that "mass merger" is equivalent to corporate suicide Last month's theatrics show that today's mergers often have nothing to do with efficiency and productivity. They stem, instead, from a sense of institutional machismo that craves acquisition. America's business giants have...