Word: itt
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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While telecommunications experts were shocked by the magnitude of the proposal, it would merely be the latest in a string of major divestitures by ITT. Since he took charge of the company in 1979, Chairman Rand Araskog has spun off some 95 businesses worth about $4 billion. Meanwhile, he has channeled resources into such prized divisions as the Hartford insurance company and the Sheraton chain of 488 hotels and resorts. Says Herbert Goodfriend, a telecommunications analyst at Prudential-Bache: "Araskog is dismantling Harold Geneen's empire...
...sugar broker from the Virgin Islands named Sosthenes Behn founded International Telephone & Telegraph, hoping to link callers around the world much as AT&T had connected phone users in the U.S. For decades thereafter, Behn's successors at ITT remained true to his vision. Even when ITT's acquisitive chairman Harold Geneen began buying dozens of companies in such fields as aerospace, bakery goods and cosmetics in the 1960s and 1970s, he kept ITT firmly planted in global telecommunications...
...however, ITT appears on the verge of pulling up its roots. In a startling disclosure, company officials said last week that they were negotiating to sell virtually their entire telecommunications business, which has an especially strong presence in Western Europe, to France's state-owned Compagnie Generale d'Electricite, for an estimated $2 billion. If the deal goes through, it would give CGE (1985 sales: $11 billion) a hefty 12% of the global telecommunications market, making it No. 2 behind AT&T. ITT (1985 sales: $20 billion) would maintain a 30% interest in the businesses sold to CGE but would...
Creating a 20% minimum corporate tax. This would prevent large, profitable companies from getting off scot-free at income-tax time, as many have done in the past because of loopholes. Boeing, ITT, General Dynamics, Greyhound and Grumman, among others, paid no taxes between 1981 and 1984, according to a study by Citizens for Tax Justice, a consumer and labor group. Commented T.A. Wilson, chairman of Boeing: "The complaint is that through various techniques, we defer taxes. I would just as soon have a minimum tax and take a lot less of that flak." The minimum tax would help finance...
...speculators sent Sperry's stock price up $16.25, to $71.25. Some investors think Sperry will find a so-called white knight to deliver it from Blumenthal's clutches, but the company is running out of candidates. During the past year, Sperry is rumored to have held merger talks with ITT, General Dynamics and AT&T, among others. An equally likely possibility is that Burroughs will eventually win Sperry's hand, but only at a sweeter price...