IN the dog days of last summer, International Telephone & Telegraph Corp., America's biggest conglomerate, surprised investors by agreeing to sell a clutch of household names that it had acquired in recent years. Among them were home builders Levitt & Sons, Avis Inc. and Hamilton Life Insurance. To ITT insiders, however, the decision was no surprise. Chairman Harold Geneen chose to sell because the alternative was a costly antitrust battle with the Justice Department that would have tied up his company in courts for years, and might still have...
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