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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

Cerf:

You seem to be suspicious. I'm telling you for the last time...RCA has not come near us, period. They haven't the faintest interest in our trade book business, other than that they want to see us make money. Even if we make another million dollars, they have outstanding something like sixty-five million shares and that's less than two additional cents a share. It's rather discouraging.

Since RCA bought us, they've acquired the Hertz Co. and the Arnold Palmer Enteprises. We cashed in nicely on Palmer yesterday. He won a big golf tournament. But all of this buying splurge that is going on...I don't know how long it's going to continue. I think that eventually the government is going to stop all of these conglomerate goings on. You know, now they can't stop you buying a business that has nothing to do with yours. They can stop your buying a competing company. That can be construed as restraint of trade. But they can't stop a clothing business from buying a milk company. Maybe there will be some new laws passed about that because gradually power seems to be concentrating in the hands of a comparative handful of companies. I guess that's bad in a country that's headed for socialism the way ours seems to be. But that's not the only thing that's bad about the things that are going on today.

Q:

No. We won't get into all that.

We went into the acquisition of Singer last time. I was thinking of going into the acquisition of Knopf, but is there anything in between that you want to discuss?





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