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Unrelated Help. ITT also appreciates the value of having important public figures on its side. The parent company's board includes John McCone, former head of the CIA, and Eugene Black, onetime chief of the World Bank. Paul-Henri Spaak, three times Prime Minister of Belgium, is a director of ITT's Belgian subsidiary. His prestige helped mightily in winning permission for ITT to put up a skyscraper European headquarters in Brussels, despite local protests that it would fracture the Brussels skyline.
When seeking a favorable government decision, ITT often agrees to provide some unrelated economic benefit. In Peru, it agreed to build an $8,000,000 hotel and a factory in order to get a favorable settlement of the government's attempt to take over the ITT-owned telephone subsidiary.
In the U.S., ITT's takeover of Hartford Fire Insurance required the permission of Connecticut's insurance commissioner. William Cotter, who then held the job, initially disapproved. Later some politicians in Hartford expressed a desire to get ITT to help with the city's urban renewal. Cotter brought them together with Geneen, Rohatyn and himself in May 1970—and the next day approved the acquisition of Hartford Fire. ITT has subsequently built a Sheraton Hotel in Hartford.
Profits and Values. When they are blocked by government action, however, ITT executives can show a startling insensitivity to public opinion. A few years ago, the Argentine government wanted to tie into a satellite-communications network, in which ITT would have had a minor interest or none at all, instead of continuing to rely on cable communications, a major field of ITT interest. James R. McNitt, president of ITT World Communications in Argentina, issued a statement: "The Latin American countries, as well as the African countries—with the sole exception of South Africa—seem to prefer satellite communications. They are wrong." His remarks outraged racially proud Argentines, who thought that he was lumping them with Black Africans while ITT classed itself with South Africans. Such bloopers cause some Argentine officials to grumble about "estos estttpidos de la ITT" (these stupid ITT people). Argentina eventually tied into a satellite system in which ITT has little share.
Both strains—a desire for political influence and an insensitivity to the "real world" outside—came together in ITT dealings in Washington about the Hartford merger. Geneen and his aides all seem to have had no idea that their private meetings with Administration leaders could give the appearance of a political fix. As for their commitment to help finance the Republican Convention through the Sheraton chain, that may have been merely a promotional venture for new hotels, as Geneen and his associates contend. Surely they could not have thought that they could buy the Justice Department. But there is good reason to believe that the commitment also represented an attempt to add a bit more weight to ITT's case—in sublime innocence of the gross impropriety of any such idea.
That is the sort of naivete that U.S. business can no longer afford. ITT has clearly been a leader in the consuming drive for higher profits. But Geneen's direction has not yet fitted it to an age in which all corporations must give great weight to broader values.