RCA

"When I joined Sylvania in 1955, there were already twenty or thirty companies engaged in the semiconductor industry, which could roughly be grouped into two categories. The first category was large companies already in the electronics industry or closely related to it. At that time the largest electronics businesses were radios and televisions, but the computer industry was about to emerge. Companies in this category included GE, RCA (Radio Corporation of America), IBM, Motorola, Sylvania, Sperry, and so on."

"You thought it was tough going from dealer to dealer for Clairtone every single summer, signing for the new models, competing against Admiral and RCA and so on. Try doing it with car dealers ... Clairtone has only six hundred dealers; Studebaker has eleven hundred. So it ain’t for me, Peter. I’m well off. Why should I waste my life? We're on top of the heap. I’m young, and there’s no way I want to do this for the next five years. You've got my backing if you want to go through with it, but you're on your own, kid. It’s your decision, but it’s also your pain.”"

"The elegant and suave William S. Paley, CBS’s chairman, would never have introduced himself to a new employee in the public elevator, because Paley had his own private elevator. Also, he was a time-honored snob and would have looked at my unruly suit and bad shoes and wondered what the hell I was doing in his classic Eero Saarinen building. At NBC, I would never have been greeted by Robert Sarnoff, its leader at the time and son of the founder, David Sarnoff. I would have quivered in the ornate lobby of the grand RCA Building, wondering which of the fifteen elevators I was supposed to take."

"On September 18, 1930, with RCA’s backing, he embarked on a new venture that would complement his record business: XEW Radio. At the age of 35, Azcárraga Vidaurreta owned the most modern radio station in Mexico City and the cornerstone of an entire media empire."

"He did this, in part, through a network of carefully cultivated connections in business and government. His was an international circle that included President Lyndon Johnson of the United States; Jean Monnet, the father of the European Common Market; Gianni Agnelli, chairman of Fiat; Eugene Black, president of the World Bank; David Rockefeller, chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank; General Lucius Clay, the mastermind of the Berlin airlift; David Sarnoff, the head of RCA; and Bill Paley, president of CBS."

"General David Sarnoff, the chairman of RCA. Two of the general’s cousins, Steve Ross and Eddie Rosenthal, wanted our help with an acquisition. Through their company Kinney National, the Rosenthal family owned funeral parlors as well as garages, parking lots, and building service concerns. As part of their funeral business, they also operated a fleet of limousines and were now hoping to acquire Avis Rent-A-Car. The fit, the Rosenthals were convinced, would be a logical one for Kinney."

"The sharks were swimming around RCA. The company’s performance, driven by a reinvigorated NBC, had been improving rapidly. But despite an increase in revenue and earnings, its stock price remained flat. This was precisely the sort of financial paradox that suggested an undervalued company. Of course, the corporate raiders couldn’t help noticing. And the word went out on Wall Street: RCA was an appealing takeover target."