Appetite for More

Even in this hungry age of corporate mergers, Chairman-President Harold S. Geneen of International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. is remarkable for his appetite. Since 1959, when he took charge of ITT with the intent of making it "one of the most important companies of the next decade," Geneen has swallowed up 44 smaller firms; they stretch across such diverse fields as auto rental (Avis), mutual-fund management (Hamilton), consumer finance (Aetna), book publishing (Bobbs-Merrill) and even airport parking. Though blocked so far by Justice Department antitrust litigation in his most ambitious effort--to acquire American Broadcasting Cos. --Geneen is still stalking new corporate game.

Last week, in one of the year's more unusual mergers, Geneen agreed to buy Levitt & Sons, Inc., the world's largest home builder, for $92 million worth of ITT stock. The building company, which showed a whole industry how to change the face of postwar suburbia, would operate as an autonomous subsidiary under President William J. Levitt.

Vanishing Pygmies. The deal is a notable landmark in the gradual transformation of the tradition-bound house building industry. Last year, amid housing's worst slump since World War II, one out of five home builders went out of business. As small firms vanish, giant combines rich enough to build on a huge scale are taking over. Big corporations such as ITT are increasingly joining forces with builders--often by merger, sometimes through joint ventures. Last year, for example, Westinghouse Electric acquired Florida's Coral Ridge Properties and is now busy building a city for 60,000 residents near Fort Lauderdale. Pennsylvania Railroad's Macco Realty Co. is developing an 87,500-acre Rancho California community near Los Angeles with Kaiser Industries and Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. American Standard Inc., the nation's biggest plumbing manufacturer, this year joined a 4,500-house venture in California's Ventura County.

Such changes already sweeping the industry must have been in Geneen's mind last week when he called Levitt & Sons "the ideal vehicle for ITT to participate in the U.S. and abroad in the revolution in housing in the next decade." Levitt fits into ITT's spreading empire (204,000 employees, 400 offices and plants in 57 countries) in other ways as well.

Through mergers, ITT has been striving to reduce its historic dependence on overseas manufacturing of telephone and electronic equipment and services for the bulk of its income. Thanks chiefly to his relentless pursuit of diversification, Geneen last year achieved his goal of balancing the company's foreign and domestic earnings. ITT's total profits reached a record $89.9 million in 1966 as its sales rose 14%, to $2.1 billion. Levitt's sales, as they have on the average for five years in a row, climbed by 25%, to $94 million. And the building company, which also retails furniture and appliances, makes an obvious outlet for such ITT consumer products as radios, TV sets, refrigerators and freezers.

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