From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are simply adding one person to the organizational hierarchy, except that one person will just happen to be a billion-dollar company that could buy and sell each and every one of you like you were office furniture.

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It is also a risky one for Brown, whose 142, 000-person company has long bragged to clients it can be trusted as "technologically agnostic, " unlike the services unit at its rival IBM.

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Watkins' one-person energy shop, Watkins Pencor , is a principal owner in Masada Oxynol , a Birmingham company that has devised a way to turn municipal solid waste into fuel-grade ethanol.

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