OC Oerlikon

OC Oerlikon Corporation AG

Type	Public
ISIN	CH0000816824
Industry	engineering / construction
Founded	1973 / 2000 / 2006
Headquarters	Freienbach, Switzerland
Key people	Roland Fischer (CEO), Michael Süss (Chairman of the Board)
Revenue	CHF 3,03 billion (2014)
Number of employees	15 656 (end of 2014)
Website	OC Oerlikon

OC Oerlikon is a listed technology group headquartered in Pfäffikon (Schwyz), Switzerland. The name “Oerlikon” (or “œrlikon”, as the company styles itself according to its corporate identity) comes from the Oerlikon district in Zurich where the group has its origins.

The roots of today’s OC Oerlikon are to be found in , which was established in 1906 and evolved into in 1973. Following an extensive restructuring process, the holding was renamed Unaxis at the start of 2000. The Austrian acquired a majority share in Unaxis in 2005. New management initiated a restructuring effort that manifested itself in a new name – OC Oerlikon – from the beginning of September 2005. At the end of 2006, the was acquired and integrated into OC Oerlikon.

OC Oerlikon currently has three Segments:

The following divisions of the Oerlikon Components business unit, which were designated as not in line with the company’s core business, were divested in 2009: Oerlikon Esec (semiconductors) was sold in April 2009 to the Dutch company BE Semiconductor Industries (Besi), and Oerlikon Space (aerospace engineering) was sold off in June 2009 to . The last remaining company in the Oerlikon Optics business unit (optics) – Oerlikon Optics Shanghai – was sold off in mid-August 2009 to the British company EIS Optics, which had been newly set up by the London-based private equity firms Nova Capital Management Limited and FF&P Private Equity Limited. Since that time, Oerlikon Components has operated as the Advanced Technologies Segment.

On March 2, 2012, Oerlikon signed a contract of sale with Tokyo Electron for its solar division, Oerlikon Solar, which employed 675 people at eight locations around the world, including its headquarters in Trübbach, Switzerland, near the border to Liechtenstein. Tokyo Electron Limited is one of the world's leading suppliers of semiconductor production equipment and is active in R&D, manufacturing and sales in a wide range of product fields. The sale of Oerlikon Solar was finalized on November 27, 2012. The Japanese electronics and semiconductor company announced in 2014 the closure of its micromorph development program it acquired from Oerlikon, despite the improvements made in thin-film silicon cell technology.