Marconi plc
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|
| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | telecommunications |
| Fate | Acquired |
| Predecessor | GEC Plessey Telecommunications (GPT) |
| Successor |
Ericsson Telent |
| Founded | 1998 |
| Defunct | 2005 |
| Owner |
GEC (1998–1999) Marconi plc (1999–2003) Marconi Corporation plc (2003–2006) |
Marconi Communications, the former telecommunications arm of the General Electric Company plc (GEC), was founded in August 1998 through the amalgamation of GEC Plessey Telecommunications (GPT) with other GEC subsidiaries: Marconi SpA, GEC Hong Kong, and ATC South Africa.
In December 1999, it became the principal subsidiary of Marconi plc, which was formed by the renaming of the entity left out of GEC, when GEC's defence arm, Marconi Electronic Systems, was merged with British Aerospace to form BAE Systems. Marconi plc was restructured to Marconi Corporation plc in May 2003.
During the mid-1990s, its prominent predecessor company, GPT, gradually disappeared. Through a series of mergers, divisions and restructuring in 1997-1998, GPT was amalgamated with two major companies: Marconi Communications and Siemens Communications (in 2008, Siemens Enterprise Communications).
On 23 January 2006, Ericsson acquired a majority of Marconi Communications' parent company, Marconi Corporation plc. The remainder of Marconi Corporation plc was renamed Telent plc.
Companies with "Marconi" in their name can trace their origins through a complex history of mergers, takeovers and divisions, to the 1963-established Marconi Company Ltd, founded in 1897 as the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company by Guglielmo Marconi. The operations of Marconi amalgamated into GEC in 1968, when GEC acquired the parent company of Marconi, English Electric.
The evolution of Marconi Communications traces to 1986, when The General Electric Company (GEC) attempted a takeover of Plessey, a British-based international electronics, defence and telecommunications company founded in 1917. The takeover bid was barred by regulatory authorities. As an amicable solution, GEC and Plessey merged their telecommunications businesses on 1 April 1988 as GEC Plessey Telecommunications (GPT). GPT was a world leader in many fields, for example synchronous digital hierarchy technology, and this brought together the two companies responsible for developing and building the System X telephone exchange, which was supposed to make selling System X simpler.
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