274 UTAH INTERNATIONAL: A BIOGRAPHY OF A BUSINESS alternatives dwindled, senior management assessed the firm’s options. One alternative was for the original family members to sell their large blocks of stock with handsome profits, but they would then face large capital gains taxes. This was not a feasible solution, because many of them had a cost basis on Utah stock of a few pennies a share. If such sales were to be consummated, the 1975 taxes on capital gains could be as much as 70 percent. Additionally, the initial unloading of large blocks of shares would depress stock prices considerably, disadvantaging the newer shareholders, who had a right to insist that share prices remain attractive with the prospect of gaining in value. Erosion of the stock’s price/earnings ratio seemed inevitable, however, given the industry and the times. This was true even if Australia’s leanings toward taking adverse political action against the ownership of Utah’s holdings could be averted, and even if an exorbitant levy on foreign shipments could be avoided. “I calculated that if we doubled our earnings I could see the same stock price,” mused Littlefield later. “I wasn’t far wrong. Strategically, I felt that we should diversify into other natural resources.” To acquire a natural resources firm, however, posed many challenges. While there were a few promising candidates, the time required to consummate the deal would take too long, given Utah’s immediate problems. Also, according to Littlefield, it would have required arranging about $1.5 billion to acquire a firm that had an earning power comparable to ours. I thought that was a very high-risk venture—to buy that much that fast—and this was bound to take us beyond the field of our expertise in natural resources and raw materials. We didn’t have the breadth of management to manage a lot of different things far removed from the kinds of skills that we are obviously good at. And if we [did] that, we [were] going to end up somewhere along the line making a bad mistake, and we’[d] pay for it. Besides all this, the acquisition of an available competitor would surely draw the attention of the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department on the basis of anti-trust measures.