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Meanwhile, the corporate takeover mania that had been gathering momentum on Wall Street since 1975 reached a new high, or low, in the month-long struggle by Bendix Corp., a Michigan-based auto-parts and aerospace manufacturer, first to take over, and ultimately to keep from being taken over by, Martin Marietta Corp. of Bethesda, Md., another aerospace concern. By the time the saga climaxed in late September, at least two more corporate leviathans, United Technologies Corp. of Hartford, Conn., and Allied Corp. of Morristown, N.J., had entered the struggle. In the end, about $4 billion had been spent, and Allied Corp., with 1981 sales of $6.4 billion, wound up acquiring Bendix, while Martin Marietta limped away burdened with almost $900 million in additional debt taken on in its desperate and ultimately successful fight to fend off Bendix.
The Bendix/Marietta merger fandango added fresh zest to the public's fascination with the ongoing adventures of Bendix's chairman and chief executive officer, William Agee, and Mary Cunningham, formerly a Bendix officer and now a vice president of strategic planning and project development at Joseph E. Seagram & Sons. After the couple were married in June, she continued to be one of his chief business advisers.
The oddest management stumble of the year came when John De Lorean, 57, the founder of the De Lorean Motor Co., sought to pioneer a whole new approach to raising cash for his struggling company. A flashy and brash self-promoter, De Lorean was nabbed by federal agents in the room of a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport and charged with conspiring to possess and distribute cocaine. At the time of his arrest, a portion of the first batch of cocaine (20 kilos) was in an open suitcase in the room. When De Lorean picked up one bag of cocaine, the undercover agents present in the room took him into custody.
For the overwhelming majority of business people, of course, 1982 was a year of neither coke scams nor merger deals, but a relentless slog through a weak economy in hopes of better times. With the economy sicker than at any other time in postwar history, and interest rates at last headed downward, although perhaps not as fast as many businessmen would like, the end of 1982 did at least bring one bit of reassurance: things were not likely to get very much worse before starting to get better. —By Christopher Byron