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 on June 16, 1920 as International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation (I.T. & T.) in Maryland.
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 (now part of L3Harris Technologies), 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 Following their military service, brothers and former sugar brokers Lt. Hernand Behn and Colonel Sosthenes Behn formed International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) in 1920. Hernand served as its first president, leading the company until his death in 1933, and growing its assets to over $500 million. Sosthenes served as a second vice-president, and later as chairman.
Previously, the brothers had first acquired the bankrupt Puerto Rico Telephone Company, as settlement for a bad debt, 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.Sampson, Anthony. The Sovereign State of ITT, Hodder and Stoughton, 1973. Garcia Algarra, Javier (2010). "The American influence in Telefónica's public relations strategy during the 20s and 30s", IEEE HISTELCON 2010 During the 1920s, ITT acquired European and American telephone companies, including International Western Electric (AT&T's European-based manufacturer of telephonic equipment), in 1925, for $30 million, renaming it International Standard Electric Corp.; All-American Cables, Inc.; Commercial Cable Co.; telegraph company Postal Telegraph and Cable Corp.; and radio company Mackay Radio and Telegraph Co.
In July 1924, the company was awarded the Spanish telephone service contract, and established Compania Telefonica Nacional de Espana SA (CTNE).
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 (BTM) of Antwerp, Belgium, which manufactured rotary system switching equipment, and the British International Western Electric, which was renamed Standard Telephones and Cables (STC). Compagnie Générale d'Electricité later purchased BTM; Nortel later purchased STC.
In 1930, ITT acquired a German holding company, Standard Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (SEG), with its subsidiaries, Ferdinand Schuchardt Berliner Frensprech- und Telegraphenwerk, A. G., Süddeutsche Apparate Fabrik G.m.b.H., Nuremberg and Mix & Genest.
It acquired 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 (then the CEO of ITTITT) and his German representative, Henry Mann, in one of his first meetings with US businesspeople.»Empfänge beim Reichskanzler«, Vossische Zeitung, Berlin 1933-08-04, Abendausgabe, Seite 3, Subsequently, Sosthenes Behn came into contact with the Keppler's circle of German bankers and businessmen who formed an inner circle of support for Hitler. Kurt Baron von Schröder and Emil Heinrich Meyer joined the ITT board, with Schröder becoming a conduit of funds from ITT to Heinrich Himmler's SS organization, according to author Antony C. Sutton, in his book, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler.
ITT subsidiaries reportedly made cash payments to SS leader 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 (Signalbau Huth), which produced for the German Wehrmacht radar equipment and transceivers in Berlin, Hanover (later the Telefunken factory), 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 Office of Military Government US Zone in Post-war Germany 1946-1949, declassified per Executive Order 12958, Section 3.5 NND Project Number: NND 775057 by: NND Date: 1977 The payments to Himmler were noted in a 1946 banking investigation report by the Office of Military Government, United States.
After merging Federal Telephone and Radio Corporation into ITT Kellogg, in 1940, and combining manufacturing operations, the name again changed to ITT Telecommunications, eventually reverting to ITT Kellogg. That year, Hernand Behn, son of ITT's deceased co-founder, was reported as being transferred to Buenos Aires by the company.
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.Leidig, Ludwig. Bombshell. sbpra, 2013
Post-war activity and acquisitions Major General William H. Harrison served as president from 1948, until his death in 1956, with Colonel Behn as chairman.
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 (founded in 1897 as a pioneer in "divided-multiple" telephone switchboards) and bought the remaining shares the next year. ITT changed the company's name 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.
Community development In 1968 ITT acquired timberland company Rayonier which owned over 30,000 acres (46.875 square miles) in Flagler County, Florida. ITT wanted more from their investment than the proceeds of wood pulp from slash pine trees. At the time, thousands of people were migrating to Florida from the Rust Belt, so management at ITT decided to create a destination with both housing and jobs for the transplants. ITT purchased tracts from 35 other owners to total 93,000 acres (145.3 square miles), the size of Cleveland or Detroit. From the start, ITT assumed that their financial resources would solve any problems encountered. There are failed developments all over Florida, but most are because of money problems.
That same year, ITT purchased homebuilder Levitt & Sons for a reported $91 million and established Palm Coast Construction Company, which built half the residences in the development. Dr. Norman Young led Levitt's marketing group, who planned the project and suggested the name, Palm Coast. The development was conceived by ITT's Community Development Corporation (ITT-CDC) in the 1960s as a master-planned community to transform 90,000 acres of wetlands and pine forest into a residential golf-centered city of 600,000 or 750,000.
Sheraton Hotels and Resorts were acquired by ITT in 1968 for $200M in stock. ITT built the Sheraton Palm Coast Resort in the early 1970s to house potential buyers for the Palm Coast development. It was a small hotel with 106 rooms, not a typical Sheraton property, and it was later demolished.
International telecommunications International telecommunications manufacturing subsidiaries included Standard Telephones and Cables in the United Kingdom and Australia, Indosat in Indonesia, Standard Elektrik Lorenz (today part of Nokia Germany) and Gesellschaft für Metallurgie und Elektronik mbH (acquired from Clevite in 1965; now TDK-Micronas) in Germany, BTM in Belgium, and CGCT and LMT in France. These companies manufactured equipment according to ITT designs, including the (1960s) Pentaconta crossbar switch and (1970s) 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 (Poland) 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 (PCM) 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, 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.International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation at Funding Universe
During the 1960s and 1970s, under Geneen's leadership, ITT rose to prominence as the archetypal conglomerate, deriving its growth from hundreds of acquisitions in diversified industries. Sales grew from about $700 million in 1960 to about $8 billion in 1970, and profit from $29 million to $550 million. However, when increased interest rates started eating away at profits in the late 1960s, growth slowed considerably.