The Mississippi Tide

"It's a mistake to think that antitrust prosecution swings from quiescence to vigor under different Attorney Generals," says William Horsley Orrick Jr., the Justice Department's chief trustbuster under Attorney General Robert Kennedy. "Antitrust is more like the Mississippi -- it just keeps rolling along."

At any rate, Orrick's Mississippi was in full spring flood last week. Capping a recent flurry of antitrust suits, Orrick and his trustbusters sued to break up three big proposed mergers in the chemical and oil industries-- including a deal that involved giant Standard Oil (N.J.), a prime target for trustbust ers since the days of Founder John D. Rockefeller.

The trustbusters moved to dismember a joint chemical subsidiary set up in Pittsburgh by Monsanto Co. and West Germany's Farbenfabriken Bayer, also filed a suit to prevent Manhattan-based Allied Chemical from absorbing General Foam Corp. But their choice target was Humble Oil, Jersey Standard's U.S. operating and marketing subsidiary. Humble planned to spend $329 million to acquire the Western operations of Tidewater Oil Co., which is owned by Jean Paul Getty, the richest living American (approximate wealth: $1 billion), and run by his son, George Getty II. The takeover would bring Humble one refinery, five supertankers and 3,900 gas stations in seven Western states. In one of the largest suits ever filed under the Clayton Anti trust Act's Section 7, which bars mergers that might substantially lessen competition, the trustbusters contended that Humble's great size could squeeze out other companies in the Western market -- even though the merged company would have only 9% of that market.

Ban on the Big. Trustbuster Orrick contends that last week's suits were routine and signified no tougher policy on his part. But businessmen complain generally that U.S. antitrust policy is a vague and antiquated crazy quilt that has been haphazardly stitched together over the last 75 years. They fear that Orrick will be emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision fortnight ago to break up two big mergers--one between a pair of banks in Lexington, Ky., and the other between two pipeline companies--even though the deals already had the approval of other federal agencies. And they considered even more ominous Orrick's declaration last week to the American Bar Association that he is willing, like some of his predecessors, to attack "previously accomplished mergers or acquisitions."

Moreover, businessmen are concerned about evidence that Orrick equates bigness with badness. He recently pledged to prevent any "dominant company from engaging in any merger, consolidation or acquisition of stock or assets." What kind of company is considered to be dominant? In the opinion of Orrick and his trustbusters, it is any firm that has assets or annual sales of $1 billion or that controls more than one-third of a nationwide line of business.

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