Word: mergers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Government lawyers, the mushrooming growth of bigness in 1956 raised a prime question: How big is too big? Trying to solve the riddle, the Justice Department's Antitrust Division filed suit against 54 mergers, more than in any year since 1949. The problem was how to let big business expand to meet the needs of the growing economy without destroying the climate for new and small businesses on which the future health of the nation depends. Though new business starts were 14% higher than 1955, business failures increased even more-to 17%. At year's end a major...
...circling each other for more than two years, each one daring the other to knock the chip off its shoulder. Last week both chips were knocked off. Fulfilling one of his dreams, 80-year-old Bethlehem Chairman Eugene G. Grace joined Youngstown Chairman James L. Mauthe in announcing a merger agreement between Beth Steel, second biggest
...case, as set forth in the complaint, was meager. It merely said that competition between the two companies would be eliminated in coke-oven byproducts, pig iron and semifinished steel products, but presented few specific details to show how, made no mention of the fact that even after the merger, Beth Steel would still be far smaller than U.S. Steel. Said a Justice man: "In this case you're losing the independent competing activity of the sixth biggest company in the industry. What more do you need than that...
...west coasts, while Youngstown is concentrated in the Midwest. Youngstown produces many products that Bethlehem does not, e.g., seamless weld pipe, while Bethlehem manufactures steel types not made at all or in any large quantity by Youngstown, e.g., structural steels, rails, castings, stampings, machinery, freight cars, ships. The merger would permit product and geographic expansion that neither company could finance in the tight money market...
...Merger Argument. There was another argument for merging: creation of another giant steel company with a capacity of 25.8 million tons (13.4 million tons less than U.S. Steel) and assets of $2.6 billion ($1 billion below U.S. Steel) could actually increase steel-industry competition. For the first time there would be a real rival for U.S. Steel, the undisputed monolith (first in capacity in ten of twelve major steel-producing categories) whose wage and price decisions have hitherto set the industry pattern...