1. In what ways does UTC’s corporate- level strategy of unrelated diversification create value?
2. What are the dangers and disadvantages of this strategy?
3. Collect some recent information on UTC from sources like Yahoo! Finance. How successful has it been in pursuing its strategy?

United Technologies Corporation (UTC), based in Hartford, Connecticut, is a conglomerate, a company that owns a wide variety of other companies that operate in different businesses and industries. Some of the companies in UTC’s portfolio are better known than UTC itself, such as Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation; Pratt & Whitney, the aircraft engine and component maker; Otis Elevator Company; Carrier air conditioning; and Chubb, the security and lock maker that UTC acquired in 2003. Today, investors frown upon companies like UTC that own and operate companies in widely different industries. There is a growing perception that managers can better manage a company’s business model when the company operates as an independent or stand- alone entity. How can UTC justify holding all these companies together in a conglomerate? Why would this lead to a greater increase in their long- term profitability than if they operated as separate companies? In the last decade the boards of directors and CEOs of many conglomerates, such as Greyhound- Dial, ITT Industries, and Textron, have realized that by holding diverse companies together they were reducing, not increasing, the profitability of their companies. As a result, many conglomerates have been broken up and their companies spun off to allow them to operate as separate, independent entities.