This paper takes a close look at the extraordinarily high pre-merger profit rates of target companies during the conglomerate merger wave. Both publicly-traded and privately-owned targets were significantly more profitable than other firms in their industries and size classes. This implies that managerial discipline was not a predominant takeover motive during the period. However, public targets were less profitable than private targets, and the largest public targets earned only average profits. This suggests that managerial discipline may have been important for the few takeovers that involved large publicly-traded targets.