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. 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., Suddeutsche Apparate Fabrik G.m.b.H., Nuremburg 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 ITT) and his German representative, Henry Mann, in one of his first meetings with US businesspeople. 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 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.
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