ITT

ITT, originally International Telephone and Telegraph, was a large conglomerate that owned a variety of businesses during its heyday under Harold Geneen in the 1960s. Like most conglomerates, ITT was forced to sell off the majority of its holdings in the 1970s, and became a shell of its 1960s glory.

The company began as an operator of telephone monopolies outside of the United States, and also purchased a number a european telephony patents. During the 1950s ITT decided to become "another RCA", and purchased Philo Farnsworth's television company to break into this new market.

In 1959 Harold Geneen was elected as CEO, and turned the minor building of the 1950s into a major force during the 1960s. At the time a combination of low interest rates and a number of now-questionable accounting and tax laws allowed companies to buy out others with hugh loans, known as a leveraged buyout. As long as the company in question had profits that were higher than the interest rate paid on the loans, the conglomerate as a whole appeared to be more profitable because the loan was not considered part of the company, while the profits were.

Geneen used ITT to build one of the larger conglomorates, buying over 300 companies during the 1960s. making more than 250 acquisitions -- some hostile -- in the 1960s and 1970s. The deals included well-known businesses such as the Sheraton hotel chain, Wonderbread maker Continental Baking, the insurer Hartford, and Avis Rent-a-Car. ITT also absorbed smaller operations in auto parts, energy, books, semiconductors and cosmetics, even Levittown, Pennsylvania developer Levitt & Sons;. In 1963, ITT tried to buy the ABC network for $700 million. But the deal was quashed by federal antitrust regulators who feared the company was growing too powerful.

ITT's sales grew from about $700 million in 1960 to about $8 billion in 1970, and its profit from $29 million to $550 million. However when the higher interest started sapping profits in the late 1960s, the company, and conglomorates generally, started a long fall into obscurity. In ITT's case this was not helped by the public anger due to its influence in elections in the United States and abroad, particularly in the early 1970s. On September 28th, 1973, ITT headquarters in New York City was bombed in protest of ITT's involvement with the September 11 Coup in Chile which saw the overthrow of the democratically elected government headed by Salvador Allende by a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet.

Geneen's ITT was nevertheless one of the longer lived conglomorates, while the likes of Ling-Temco-Vought and Litton were in serious financial difficulties by the early 1970s and had rid themselves of their CEO's, Geneen managed ITT until 1977. His successor, Rand Araskog, dismantled Geneen's empire, selling off all or part of 250 companies, including the last of ITT's telecommunications businesses.

In 1997 ITT completed a merger with Starwood Hotels and Resorts selling off its non-hotel and resorts business and disposing of their world headquarters at 1330 Avenue of the Americas in New York City. Several former ITT subsidaries are still very active including one which is still a major defense contractor, though it has shed a number of its own internal businesses.