Business: Kennecott and the White Knights

Its Carborundum buy sets off a shareholders' storm

Of all the bizarre business takeovers in this year of furious financial raiding, one has raised howls of hearty laughter among Wall Street insiders and others. It is the takeover by Kennecott Copper Corp. (1976 sales: $956 million), the nation's largest copper company, of the Carborundum Co., a Niagara Falls-based diversified firm (sales: $614 million). Reason for the mirth: Kennecott paid the astonishing price of more than $560 million, or $66 a share—twice Carborundum's book value. Many of Kennecott's nearly 72,000 stockholders were sclerotic over the...

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