For more than a year, Chicago's Pure Oil Co. has been much like the princess of a Norwegian fairy tale: sitting on top of a hill of glass, she watched as a host of suitors tried to negotiate the slippery slope to win her hand. Pure would welcome a corporate marriage, all right: although its sales in the past ten years have risen 64% , to $630 million, gas wars and short supplies of Pure-produced crude have cut earnings to a disappointingly steady $30 million. Plenty of wooers have tried the hill but slipped on Pure's fussy terms: Atlantic...
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