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Building modest homes made Levitt rich. In 1968, after his company had built more than 140,000 houses around the world, Levitt & Sons was sold to ITT Corp. for $92 million in stock, most of which went to him. That fortune bought, among other things, a 237-ft. yacht, La Belle Simone, named for his third wife, and a 30-room mansion in Mill Neck, N.Y. But the deal barred him from the domestic construction business for 10 years. Within four years, the ITT stock, which he had been using as collateral to build subdivisions in places like Iran, Venezuela...
...give him signed, undated resignation letters that he could use if they tried to vote against him. His closest employees, according to one biographer, formed the Occidental Mouseketeers--with official membership drawings of a cowering mouse on a red carpet. But they weren't as beaten as the ITT execs of the 1960s and '70s, who were regularly grilled and even sickened in large meetings with CEO Harold Geneen...
Theoretically, a conglomerate made sense because it could balance out the business cycle by trading in a wide array of goods and services. Somewhat perversely, both the tax code and the antitrust policy at that time encouraged the strategy. ITT bought the maker of Wonder bread...
...bought more companies than ITT's Geneen, who during the second half of the 1960s was called "the greatest businessman alive." ITT made telephone equipment, ran hotels, built homes, rented autos, sold insurance, made grass seed and rented billboards. He believed in big and swore that "if risk is a bucking bronco, a conglomerate is the best way to enjoy the ride...
...ITT Tech...