The secret settlement means the merger vote will go ahead on Tuesday 18th and is likely to approve the takeover of EDO Corp by ITT, despite the fact that SAC, a major shareholding hedge fund has said it will vote against the merger. SAC holds just 9% of EDO Corp shares.

The expected merger will bring the notorious ITT multinational conglomerate to Brighton in the new Year.

ITT have a history of active support and collusion with fascist dictatorships from the 1930's onwards, persuading the US state department to support Franco's military coup, and supplying Hitler with military equipment through WWII.

ITT formed their own international intelligence network before the creation of the CIA and acted.

ITT also sponsored the CIA backed 1973 coup in Chile led by Pinochet, that brought about tens of thousands of trade union and left wing activists and supporters.

The obvious involvement of ITT led to their offices being targeted by German anti-imperialist urban guerilla group Revolutionary Cells (RZ) in the 1970s.

ITT was bombed in by RZ or its supporters in Nurnberg, Berlin, New York and Rome.

In 1977, CIA Director Richard Helms was prosecuted and convicted for misleading Congress about the CIA's role in Chile.

Perjury charges against ITT relating to the same congressional hearings were dropped in 1979 on grounds of US national security. The court decided that the case would lead to the disclosure of classified information harmful to the US.

Evidence of ITT's involvement was later confirmed in released declassified CIA documents in the late 1990's.

The perjury case against ITT was never reopened.

IN 2007 ITT pleaded guilty to having willfully violating US arms control laws over several decades up to the present day. They admitted selling classified night vision technology to China without Us government approval.

ITT agreed to plead guilty and pay an unprecedented $100million fine on condition that none of the directors were individually prosecuted.

The CEO of ITT responsible for the offences left the company, and was appointed by the Bush administration as a Governor of the US Postal Service, and coincidentally he became Senior Advisor of the Carlyle Group.

In 1973 the writer Anthony Sampson described ITT as a 'sovereign state' such was its power to act in the international political arena without being accountable to national governments.

The 2007 Defense News Top 100 ranks ITT as the 17th largest arms company in the world.

The expected EDO merger is expected to cause as rise in the ITT rank.







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EDO, investors reach settlement
BY JAMES BERNSTEIN |  james.bernstein@newsday.com
December 12, 2007


EDO Corp. said yesterday it has reached a settlement with two stockholders who filed suit in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, charging that the defense-electronics company's agreement to be acquired by ITT Corp. of White Plains for $56 a share was inadequate.

Court action slated for today was canceled.

Terms of the settlement with Bethlehem Aggregated Pension Fund and Samuel Pill were not disclosed.


A shareholders meeting to approve the acquisition by ITT is scheduled for Tuesday. The deal is valued at about $1.7 billion.

The company has major facilities in Bohemia and North Amityville. It employs about 4,000 people worldwide, including 600 on Long Island.

SAC Capital Advisors of Stamford, Conn., Manhattan-based EDO's second-largest shareholder, said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month that it will vote against the proposed acquisition, saying it felt the purchase price is inadequate.

But yesterday morning, RiskMetrics Group, a financial analytics company in Manhattan, said it backed the deal. "On balance, we do not have enough publicly disclosed information to determine that the $56 offer should be rejected by EDO shareholders," RiskMetrics said.

Shares of EDO rose 5 cents yesterday to $55.50. They are up