SEVERAL years ago, Harold Geneen complained about the image of the company that he heads: "You can stop 15 people in the street and not one will know what ITT is. That bothers me." Geneen hardly has that worry today. ITT is a household name. Everybody who reads the headlines knows that the International Telephone and Telegraph Corp. is the multibillion-dollar firm that quietly agreed to put up at least $100,000 to help finance this year's Republican National Convention, and shortly thereafter negotiated a controversial settlement in a classic antitrust case. But Geneen's interests scarcely run to backroom politics. By concentrating on business to the exclusion of almost everything else, including personal life, Geneen has built ITT into the eighth largest U.S.-based industrial concern and the biggest of all multinational conglomerates.
The man and the company are really indistinguishable. In an era of colorless hired managers, trim, short-haired Geneen has shaped a corporation that everyone in business identifies with him. When he became its president in 1959, ITT already was large, with sales of $765 million, but it mostly produced and ran telecommunications systems abroad. Under Geneen, ITT through a dizzying series of acquisitions has become a hotel operator (Sheraton), insurance seller (Hartford Fire), car renter (Avis), baker (Continental Baking), homebuilder (Levitt), as well as a maker of pulp and cellulose and a major shareholder in Comsat. Overseas it has been rolling like Patton's Third Army into cosmetics, food products, auto parts and construction materials. Last year it employed almost 400,000 people in 67 countries. They generated sales of $7.3 billion, excluding Chilean and insurance operations, and profits of $337 million.
Highest Paid. Geneen plays this corporate machine like an organ and tries to keep his fingers on every last key. A trained accountant, he thinks in figures—sales, profits, production, inventories. He requires subordinates round the world to send him reams of detailed reports, which he stuffs into several briefcases for perusal while being chauffeured to and from ITT's checkbook-modern Manhattan headquarters. His long working days are spent in meetings with ITT people, and his social engagements are related to business. Though he is perhaps the highest-paid executive in the U.S. (1970 salary: $766,755) he cares little for good food or wine, custom tailoring or other perquisites, and has no hobbies or compelling outside interests. His second wife June accommodates herself to his single-minded devotion to business.
The management structure of ITT is that of a federated empire. Division chiefs are free to run their operations, so long as they can convince Geneen that they are hitting his targets of a 15% compounded growth in profits every year, or have excellent reasons why they cannot do so. In order to check, Geneen summons more than 100 lieutenants to two monthly meetings, one in Manhattan and one in Brussels. The meetings, which are exhaustive reviews of all the figures and problems of each division, often last four days and nights.