ITT Inc.
ITT Inc., formerly ITT Corporation, is an American manufacturing company based in Stamford, Connecticut. The company produces specialty components for the aerospace, transportation, energy, and industrial markets. ITT's three business units are Industrial Process, Motion Technologies, and Connect and Control Technologies.
ITT has over 10,000 employees in more than 35 countries and serves customers in more than 100 countries. The company's long-standing brands include Goulds Pumps, Cannon connectors, KONI shock absorbers, and Enidine energy absorption components.
The company was founded in 1920 as International Telephone & Telegraph. During the 1960s and 1970s, under the leadership of CEO Harold Geneen, the company rose to prominence as the archetypal conglomerate, deriving its growth from hundreds of acquisitions in diversified industries.
ITT divested its telecommunications assets in 1986. In 1995, the company sold off its hospitality portfolio, including Sheraton Hotels and Resorts. In 1996, the current company was founded as a spinoff of ITT as ITT Industries, Inc. It later changed its name to ITT Corporation in 2006.
In 2011, ITT spun off its defense businesses into a company named Exelis, and its water technology business into a company named Xylem Inc. ITT Corporation changed its name to ITT Inc. in 2016.
History
Beginnings and early acquisitions
Brothers Hernan Behn and Colonel Sosthenes Behn formed International Telephone & Telegraph in 1920. The brothers had acquired the Puerto Rico Telephone Company in 1914, along with the Cuban-American Telephone and Telegraph Company and a half-interest in the Cuban Telephone Company. ITT's first major expansion came in 1923, when it consolidated operators in the telecoms market in Spain into what eventually became Telefónica. From 1922 to 1925, ITT purchased a number of European telephone companies.In 1925, ITT purchased several companies from Western Electric, as Bell had agreed to "divest" itself of its international operations. They included the Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company of Antwerp, Belgium, which manufactured rotary system switching equipment, and the British International Western Electric, which was renamed Standard Telephones and Cables. Compagnie Générale d'Electricité later purchased BTM; Nortel later purchased STC.
In the 1930s, ITT purchased German electronic companies Standard Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft and Mix & Genest and Romanian telecommunications monopoly Societatea Anonima Română de Telefoane. Its only serious rival was the Theodore Gary & Company conglomerate, which operated a subsidiary, Associated Telephone and Telegraph, with manufacturing plants in Europe.
In the United States, ITT acquired the various companies of the Mackay Companies in 1928 through a specially organized subsidiary corporation, Postal Telegraph & Cable. These companies included the Commercial Cable Company, the Commercial Pacific Cable Company, Postal Telegraph, and the Federal Telegraph Company.
German subsidiaries in the Nazi period
On August 3, 1933, Adolf Hitler received Sosthenes Behn and his German representative, Henry Mann, in one of his first meetings with US businesspeople.In his book Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, Antony C. Sutton claims that ITT subsidiaries made cash payments to SS leader Heinrich Himmler. ITT, through its subsidiary C. Lorenz AG, owned 25% of Focke-Wulf, the German aircraft manufacturer and builder of some of the most successful Luftwaffe fighter aircraft. In the 1960s, ITT Corporation won $27 million in compensation for damage inflicted on its share of the Focke-Wulf plant by Allied bombing during World War II. In addition, Sutton's book uncovers that ITT owned shares of Signalbau AG, Dr. Erich F. Huth, which produced for the German Wehrmacht radar equipment and transceivers in Berlin, Hanover, and other places. While ITT-Focke-Wulf planes were bombing Allied ships and ITT lines were passing information to German submarines, ITT direction-finders were saving other ships from torpedoes. The payments to Himmler were noted in a 1946 banking investigation report by the Office of Military Government, United States.
In 1943, ITT became the largest shareholder of Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau GmbH with 29% and remained so for the duration of the war. This was due to Kaffee HAG's share falling to 27% after the death in May of Kaffee HAG chief Dr. Ludwig Roselius. OMGUS documents reveal that the role of the HAG conglomerate could not be determined during WWII.
Post-war acquisitions
In 1951, ITT purchased Philo Farnsworth's television company to break into that market. At the time, Farnsworth was also developing the Fusor fusion reactor, which was funded by ITT until 1967. Also in 1951, ITT bought a majority interest in the Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company and bought the remaining shares the next year. ITT changed the company's name to ITT Kellogg. After merging Federal Telephone and Radio Corporation into ITT Kellogg and combining manufacturing operations, the name again changed to ITT Telecommunications, eventually reverting to ITT Kellogg.One prominent subsidiary of this firm was the American Cable and Radio Corporation, which operated the transatlantic cables of the Commercial Cable Company, among other ventures. It bought Philadelphia-based heating and air-conditioning manufacturer John J. Nesbitt Inc. In 1968, the company purchased Levittown homebuilder Levitt & Sons for a reported $91 million.
In 1972 the KONI Group, manufacturer of shock absorbers, was added to the list of ITT's acquisitions.
International telecommunications
International telecommunications manufacturing subsidiaries included Standard Telephones and Cables in the United Kingdom and Australia, Indosat in Indonesia, Standard Elektrik Lorenz and Gesellschaft für Metallurgie und Elektronik mbH in Germany, BTM in Belgium, and CGCT and LMT in France. These companies manufactured equipment according to ITT designs, including the Pentaconta crossbar switch and Metaconta D, L, and 10c Stored Program Control exchanges, mostly for sale to their respective national telephone administrations. This equipment was also produced under license in Poznań and in Yugoslavia and elsewhere. ITT was the largest owner of the LM Ericsson company in Sweden but sold out in 1960.Alec Reeves, an ITT employee in France in the 1930s, developed pulse-code modulation innovations, upon which future digital voice communication was based. Charles K. Kao, working at STC in the UK, pioneered the use of optical fiber from 1966, for which he was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Harold Geneen's appointment
In 1959, Harold Geneen became CEO. Using leveraged buyouts, he turned the minor acquisitions of the 1950s into major growth during the 1960s. In 1965, ITT attempted to purchase the ABC television network for $700 million. The deal was halted by federal antitrust regulators who feared ITT was growing too large. ITT moved to acquire companies outside the telecommunications industry to continue its growth without violating antitrust legislation. Under Geneen's leadership, ITT acquired over 300 companies in the 1960s, with some of these acquisitions being hostile takeovers. The deals included well-known businesses like the Sheraton hotel chain, Wonder Bread maker Continental Baking, Rayonier, and Avis Rent-a-Car. ITT also absorbed smaller operations in auto parts, energy, books, semiconductors, and cosmetics. In 1966, ITT acquired Educational Services, Inc., an operator of for-profit schools, which became ITT/ESI. When ITT attempted to acquire The Hartford insurance company in 1970, the US Justice Department filed suit, and ITT agreed to divest assets equal to those of Hartford's, including Avis.ITT's sales grew from about $700 million in 1960 to about $8 billion in 1970, and its profit from $29 million to $550 million. However, when increased interest rates started eating away at profits in the late 1960s, ITT's growth slowed considerably.
In the late 1960s, the British electronics manufacturer Kolster-Brandes Limited, KB for short, had run into trouble with its color television manufacturing and turned to ITT for help; ITT bought out the company, and for a while, UK products were badged "ITT KB" then eventually just ITT. By the late 1970s, ITT had a substantial presence on the UK domestic electrical market in television, audio, and portable radio products.
Brazilian expropriation in 1962
In February 1962, during the presidency of João Goulart, the State Governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Leonel Brizola, decided to expropriate a Brazilian subsidiary of ITT, the Companhia Telefônica Nacional. During the following years of Goulart's presidency, the expropriation was one of the most debated Brazilian political issues. The action from the state governor to expropriate the company was never supported by the Brazilian president at the time and had severe implications for Brazil–United States relations. Some historians even say that the expropriation was one of the reasons for the federal government of the United States supporting the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état.1972 Republican National Convention
ITT became involved in a scandal related to the 1972 Republican National Convention. In May 1971, ITT president Geneen pledged $400,000 to support a proposal to hold the convention in San Diego; only $100,000 of the contribution was publicly disclosed. The Republican National Committee selected San Diego as the site in July 1971.However, on February 29, 1972, newspaper columnist Jack Anderson disclosed an interoffice memo from ITT lobbyist Dita Beard to ITT vice president Bill Merriam, dated June 25, 1971. The memo appeared to draw a connection between ITT's contribution to the convention and the favorable settlement of a United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division lawsuit. The resulting scandal, including a Senate investigation and the threat of criminal charges, caused ITT to withdraw its support for the San Diego convention. That, combined with a shortage of hotel space and problems with the proposed venue, led the RNC to move the convention to Miami. Special prosecutor Leon Jaworski investigated the case but ultimately concluded there was no evidence of criminal conduct by ITT.
Nixon aides such as John Dean and Jeb Stuart Magruder have alleged that the Watergate break-in was motivated by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President's suspicion that the Democratic National Committee was making similar deals to fund its 1972 convention. This theory is supported by conversations and exchanges between President Richard Nixon and his chief of staff H. R. Haldeman before and after the break-in, as well as by testimony by E. Howard Hunt. However, this theory has also been disputed by others involved in the break-in, such as G. Gordon Liddy.