SKINFLINT'S CITY DIARY
The take-over activities of the giant con- glomerates in the United States led one wit to term our present age that of `The Age of Acquireius'. But now how are the conglom- erates fallen. Almost all of them have been taking a terrible beating. Except for one. The largest of all, International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, have just reported record sales and earnings for the eleventh successive year. Sales of $6.4 billion and consolidated net income of $353 million.
In fact rrr's list of financial records are so long as to be unquotable. How do they do it? Well genius helps a bit. And I suppose that Harold S. Geneen, rrr's chairman and president, must rank along with Capahlanca at chess and Clay in boxing, as one of the pure originals.
He also manages to run a $350,0(X) busi- ness with the smallest possible lines of com- munication. Geneen's Brussels meetings in which he descends on rrr's headquarters with his top entourage and plunges through the balance sheets of his innumerable European companies is now a by-word in management folk lore. 'He can skim through a balance sheet as if he is glancing at a comic,' one 117 man told me.
The Arab hi-jacking of planes has changed Geneen's travelling habits. There was a time when the ITT top brass came over in different planes in order to avoid too many inconvenient deaths in high places if the plane crashed. Now the irr hierarchy all come over in a company plane. No doubt as borne on the fervent prayer of ITT stock- holders.
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