Despite the best efforts of press and brokers, many takeover discuss-ions still pass quite unreported, and it is only now, as ITT Corp chairman Rand Araskog prepares to write a book about his (unfinished) time running the company that we learn that in 1985, when ITT was under siege from corporate raiders, the company discussed merger with both Burroughs Corp and Wang Laboratories Inc, and it doesn’t take much guesswork to discern why the talks fell through: Michael Blumenthal wanted to run the combined show with Araskog reduced to a sinecure role, while An Wang wanted the Wang family to retain a controlling holding in the combination.