Word: geneen
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...organization of which he proudly says: "There may be as many as 200 problems a month, but we hit 'em all in two days." To keep on hitting them, he has gone so far as to distribute footballs to his top executives with badges inscribed "Carry the ball." Geneen makes no apology for what he considers to be the be-all and the end-all of corporate existence: profits. In fact, his avowed ambition when he took over ITT was to double profits every five years; he was on schedule at the end of his first five-year plan...
...During Geneen's reign, ITT has increased sales from $766 million in 1959 to $2.1 billion last year, earnings from $29 million to $90 million; in the first six months of 1967, sales have gone up another 5%. The company has set new sales and earnings records for a phenomenal 32 consecutive quarters. Its assets over that span have almost tripled, to over $2.3 billion. ITT's directors last month rewarded Geneen with a contract extending his term as president to the mandatory retirement-age of 65-still eight years...
Much of ITT's growth has come from Geneen's success in playing the merger game. In all, the skipper of the Genie IV has reeled in 44 companies, ranging across fields as diverse as auto rentals, mutual-fund management and airport parking. The biggest catch of all-ITT's proposed merger with American Broadcasting Cos.-has so far eluded...
Even without ABC, Geneen has established himself as one of the most acquisitive empire builders at a time when merger mania is altering the landscape of U.S. business...
...companies are conglomerates; U.S. Steel, for example, not only turns out metals but also builds bridges and sells cement. However, in Wall Street parlance, conglomerates are generally those companies that have adopted a diversification-by-merger philosophy as a way of corporate life-and most of them share Harold Geneen's distaste for the term. After all, says Ralph Ablon, who has built his Ogden Corp. into a far-reaching (shipbuilding, metals, processed foods) conglomerate, the word connotes a company with "no unity, no purpose and no design."* To most image-conscious companies, the real conglomerates are thus...