Peter F. Hartz

An account of one of the most infamous fiascoes of the merger-mania period of the early 1980s; namely, the attempt by Bendix to take over Martin Marietta, which ended up with Bendix getting taken over by a third party, Allied. You get a strong flavour in this book for just how chaotic and ill-planned this whole move was, and to a certain extent how wasteful it was. Hartz, it should be noted, was the son of one of the directors of Bendix. In spite of that, Bendix Corporation and its head, Bill Agee, come off very poorly in this account (director Hartz stayed loyal to Agee to the end). Some of the action here is a bit unbelievable, and I'm not a fan of the reconstructed-dialogue type of journalism. Still, an interesting account worth reading, though to a certain extent it's ancient history. Hartz does not appear to have written any other books, and it's not clear what his qualifications were for this, other than his parentage.… (more)