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He has built a like-minded organization of which he proudly says: "There may be as many as 200 problems a month, but we hit 'em all in two days." To keep on hitting them, he has gone so far as to distribute footballs to his top executives with badges inscribed "Carry the ball." Geneen makes no apology for what he considers to be the be-all and the end-all of corporate existence: profits. In fact, his avowed ambition when he took over ITT was to double profits every five years; he was on schedule at the end of his first five-year plan, and he seems certain to make it again at the end of the second. Says General Electric Vice President Louis Rader, an ex-ITT man: "Geneen is like a man in a field with a lot of rocks in it. And he thinks there's a pot of gold under one of those rocks, so he's got to turn over as many as he can."
During Geneen's reign, ITT has increased sales from $766 million in 1959 to $2.1 billion last year, earnings from $29 million to $90 million; in the first six months of 1967, sales have gone up another 5%. The company has set new sales and earnings records for a phenomenal 32 consecutive quarters. Its assets over that span have almost tripled, to over $2.3 billion. ITT's directors last month rewarded Geneen with a contract extending his term as president to the mandatory retirement-age of 65—still eight years off.
Much of ITT's growth has come from Geneen's success in playing the merger game. In all, the skipper of the Genie IV has reeled in 44 companies, ranging across fields as diverse as auto rentals, mutual-fund management and airport parking. The biggest catch of all—ITT's proposed merger with American Broadcasting Cos.—has so far eluded him.
Even without ABC, Geneen has established himself as one of the most acquisitive empire builders at a time when merger mania is altering the landscape of U.S. business.
What Is a Conglomerate? So far this year, major U.S. business mergers have been moving at a record clip of 150 a month. But what sets the present wave of mergers apart is not so much its volume as its nature. Over 70% of the mergers have been of the conglomerate variety. The reason for this is that antitrust rulings have virtually outlawed "horizontal" mergers (between competitors) and, to a lesser extent, "vertical" ones (with suppliers or customers). As a result, today's merger-minded companies are looking for partners in industries far afield from their own, as in American Tobacco's current negotiations to acquire apparel-making Kayser-Roth Corp.
For conglomerate companies like Gulf & Western Industries, such mergers have had spectacular results. Under Chairman Charles Bluhdorn, Gulf & Western, which a decade ago was an ailing Houston auto-parts company, has gobbled up one company after another (among them: Paramount Pictures, New Jersey Zinc) to balloon into a $1 bil-lion-a-year operation. A pioneer in the conglomerate-building field, Los Angeles' Litton Industries, which was started almost from scratch by Chairman Charles B. ("Tex") Thornton (TIME cover, Oct. 4, 1963) and President Roy Ash in 1953, is still building. Last week, Litton (1966 sales: $1.2 billion) arranged to pick up yet another property, Pennsylvania-based Landis Tool Co.