Wilmington, Del. ? Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian testified Tuesday that he never would have supported the deal creating DaimlerChrysler if it had not been portrayed as a “merger of equals” between the American and German automakers.

Kerkorian, who is suing the company for more than $1 billion, said that in his dealings with former Chrysler chairman Robert Eaton there was no indication the Daimler Benz-Chrysler combination was anything else.

“It was called a merger of equals. … It was always called a merger of equals,” Kerkorian testified in federal court in the nonjury trial.

Kerkorian, whose Tracinda Corp. was the largest Chrysler shareholder at the time of the merger, claims Daimler-Benz officials secretly organized a Chrysler takeover.

As a result, Kerkorian claims, Daimler-Benz avoided paying him an acquisition fee of up to 62 percent on his stock when the companies merged. Kerkorian owned 14 percent of Chrysler’s stock at the time.

DaimlerChrysler maintains Kerkorian supported the deal and grew disgruntled only when his stock lost value.

A key issue in the lawsuit is a 2000 interview that DaimlerChrysler chairman Jurgen Schrempp gave to the Financial Times. Schrempp was quoted as saying that he never meant for the merger to be one of equals and that the deal was billed that way “for psychological reasons.”

In the interview, Schrempp described Chrysler as a “division” of Daimler.

Kerkorian said Tuesday that he would not have supported the deal if the article had appeared at the time and that he was surprised and upset by the report. He said his doubts about the deal being a merger of equals grew when Chrysler chairman James Holden was fired a short time later and replaced by Dieter Zetsche.