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For Carborundum stockholders and some arbitragers like Goldman, Sachs and Salomon Bros., it was a satisfying deal, to say the least. It was also a notable coup for the patrician Mellon family of Pittsburgh, which has for decades owned a large block of Carborundum stock.
Whether a merger of a copper company that is losing bushels of money with a highly diversified technology outfit can succeed will not be known for years. But Vice President J. Thomas Hill of First Boston Corp., the investment banking house that represented Kennecott in the deal, put the case for the merger this way: "Once it becomes public that a company is fighting off a takeover bid, that company inevitably has to be sold. The sharks begin to circle, but then the white knights like us move in and rescue the company." Now some Kennecott shareholders are doubtless looking for a white knight.