Word: mergers
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BALTIMORE: It's not suprising that the Federal Trade Commission is expected to approve the proposed $7.9 billion merger of Lockheed Martin, the number one U.S. contractor, with sixth-ranking Northrop Grumman, since the U.S. is taking the position in the post Cold War era that preserving critical technologies is more important than avoiding monopolies. Observes TIME's Mark Thompson: "The argument here is that fewer efficient companies are better than more inefficient ones." Besides, when was efficiency ever an issue in the defense industry? While such a deal in any other sector would spark worries about concentration of market...
Forget all this stuff about global telephone wars, deregulation and anticompetitiveness. Policy wonks can ponder such issues all they want in view of the possible $50 billion merger of long-distance king AT&T with regional phone operator SBC Communications. Investors need consider only one thing to conclude that the deal is a loser: break-ups almost always are more valuable than megamergers, and AT&T's own history provides a storehouse of evidence. That this deal is even on the drawing board is more confounding than Dennis Rodman...
...companies between 1965 and 1990, on average, rose 76%, vs. a market average of only 43%, over three years. Why? Often spin-off companies become more focused, and because they are smaller they tend to have greater ability to grow rapidly. Meanwhile, there is little evidence that giant mergers create great wealth for shareholders. Just ask AT&T. It paid $7.4 billion for NCR Computer in 1991 and soon gave up on the acquisition, spinning it off to shareholders as part of another split, this one three ways, last year. So now somebody wants to put Ma Bell back together...
...class of '72 witnessed the change of command from President Nathan Pusey to President Derek Bok. We experienced Harvard and Radcliffe have a "non-merger." Mather House opened on the river. American society actually experienced a sea change while we were undergraduates. Music exploded from Motown to the Beatles and Laura Nyro...
Hunneman adds that the two colleges have virtually merged in the minds of most students, in any case, so the merger should be made formal...