General Electric Company plc
 |
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| Public limited company | |
| Industry | Engineering |
| Fate | Defence arm merged with BAe to form BAE Systems (1999) GEC renamed Marconi plc (1999) |
| Successor |
BAE Systems Marconi plc Otis Elevator Company |
| Founded | 1886 |
| Defunct | 1999 |
| Headquarters | Coventry, England, UK |
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Key people
|
Hugo Hirst (Founder), (managing director) |
| Products | Electronics |
The General Electric Company, or GEC, was a major UK-based industrial conglomerate involved in consumer and defence electronics, communications, and engineering. The company was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
In December 1999, GEC's defence arm, Marconi Electronic Systems, was amalgamated with British Aerospace to form BAE Systems. The rest of GEC continued as Marconi plc. The financial troubles that followed the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001 led to the restructuring in 2003 of Marconi plc into Marconi Corporation plc.
In 2005, Ericsson acquired the bulk of Marconi Corporation plc, along with its principal subsidiary, Marconi Communications. The remainder of the business was renamed Telent.
GEC had its origins in the G. Binswanger and Company, an electrical goods wholesaler established in London in the 1880s by a German-Jewish immigrant, Gustav Binswanger (later Gustav Byng). Regarded as the year GEC was founded, 1886 saw a fellow immigrant, Hugo Hirst, join Byng, and the company changed its name to The General Electric Apparatus Company (G. Binswanger).
Their small business found early success with its unorthodox method of supplying electrical components over the counter. Hugo Hirst was an entrepreneurial salesman who saw the potential of electricity and was able to direct the standardisation of an industry in its infancy. He travelled across Europe with an eye for the latest products, and in 1887 the company published the first electrical catalogue of its kind. The following year, the company acquired its first factory in Salford, where electric bells, telephones, ceiling roses and switches were manufactured.
In 1889, the business was incorporated as a private company known as General Electric Company Ltd. The company was expanding rapidly, opening new branches and factories and trading in 'everything electrical', a phrase that was to become synonymous with GEC.
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Wikipedia