The American Can Company was a manufacturer of tin cans. It was a member of the Tin Can Trust, that controlled a "large percentage of business in the United States in tin cans, containers, and packages of tin."[1] American Can Company ranked 97th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.[2] During its peak of productivity, the American Can Company employed up to 800 people from the surrounding neighborhoods. It was a member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1959 to 1991, though after 1987 it had renamed itself Primerica, a financial conglomerate which had divested itself of its packaging arm in 1986.
Primerica, after it was merged with Sanford I. Weill's Commercial Credit Company, would form the basis of what would become Citigroup.
The American Can Company had its headquarters at the Pershing Square Building in Manhattan, New York City, until 1970, when it moved into a Greenwich, Connecticut, facility, which had been developed on 150 acres (61 ha) of wooded land in the late 1960s. In the early 1980s American Can renamed itself and ended its operations in Greenwich.[3]
Suit was filed here today in the United States District Court to dissolve the American Can Company, the so-called Tin Can Trust, which the Department of Justice alleges controls a large percentage of business of the United States in tin cans, containers, and packages of tin.