Word: itt
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ITT Lobbyist Dita Beard agreed last week to talk about her past with TIME Correspondent Ted Hall. It was only days before she was to face a grilling by U.S. Senators investigating Columnist Jack Anderson's charges that she had written a memo linking the Nixon Administration's settlement of an antitrust case against ITT with a company contribution to the Republican National Convention (see THE PRESS). The rumbustious Mrs. Beard, 53, refused to discuss her role in the ITT controversy, but was not at all shy about revealing intimate, if sometimes confused details of her earlier days...
...position by a rare manager who possesses more facts than he does. But Geneen is also impatient, demanding quick figure-filled answers to his questions, and occasionally brutal, verbally flaying or simply ignoring executives who pose questions that he considers irrelevant. Working for Geneen is a tension-filled experience; ITT managers tend to be garrulous, because of the necessity of constantly justifying themselves. They find his constant demands challenging, if unnerving. They also are paid top dollar; five ITT executives drew more than $200,000 each in 1970. Geneen once publicly chastised an executive almost to the point of making...
...ITT executives form a tight club. Admittance comes only after eight hours of psychological testing, applied to everyone down to the lowliest employees. Once in, ITT executives speak to and socialize almost exclusively with other ITT people. The club has a mania for security; paper-shredding machines like the one that chewed up ITT's Washington files whine continually in most ITT offices. Returning from Washington on a company plane last week, Geneen cracked: "Now I guess we'll have to acquire a company that makes paper-shredding machines...
...ITT has much experience in dealing with politicians, mostly foreign. Some of its best customers for telephone and telegraph gear are European and Latin American governments. Dealings with these government officials are often on a straight quid pro quo basis. For example, in bidding for a government contract abroad, the company might offer to build a plant in an underdeveloped part of the host country. Close ITT watchers do not find it the least unusual that the company-or, for that matter, many a large, powerful firm-when threatened with antitrust prosecution, would approach Administration leaders directly and do everything...
Hedged Bets. ITT's recent sorry relations with the U.S. Government raise some questions about its future growth. True, the trustbusters could have given the company a tougher deal; for example, they could have forced it to sell off Hartford Fire instead of the lesser Avis, Levitt and several other companies. ITT stands to collect about $600 million from those sales, and Geneen figures that he can reinvest the money-mostly in Europe-in ways that will raise profits by 10% to 12% a year. But the trustbusters have forbidden ITT from making any major acquisitions...