Siemens (United Kingdom)
of Brentford
1965 Having been out of the UK market since WWII, Siemens AG of Germany re-established a presence in the country, forming Siemens (U.K.), a joint venture by Siemens and Halske AG and Siemens-Schuckert. Two of the directors, A. L. Foulger and J. D. Morton, came from Hackbridge Holdings, a company which had taken over Siemens' cable factory at Woolwich and held the Siemens name in Britain[1]
1968 The 2 directors from Hackbridge had to leave the board when that company was taken over by AEI which was then acquired by GEC, both competitors of Siemens.
Siemens (UK) planned to establish small-scale manufacturing in the UK, once the country had decided on its membership of the European Common Market.
1988 GEC and Siemens AG set up a jointly held company, GEC Siemens plc, to launch a hostile takeover of Plessey but it was referred to the MMC.
1989 After the reference to the MMC, in February GEC Siemens announced a new bid for Plessey. The takeover was completed in September 1989. GEC expected to acquire about 40 percent of the Plessey businesses (by value)[2]
By 1989 Siemens' UK operations, based primarily at Siemens plc in Sunbury-on-Thames, handled the sales and distribution of Siemens products, and also engaged in the production of printed circuit boards, and high-powered amplifiers.
Other Siemens activities in the UK included the production and sale of electricity supply meters (through a wholly-owned subsidiary, FML Ltd in Oldham), hearing instruments (in Aylesbury), cardiac pacemakers (in East Kilbride), and studio sound recording equipment (in Melbourne).
Siemens also owned Norton, based in Luton, which distributed PABXs and telephone key systems and provided support services for such systems. Norton's sales in the year to 30 September 1988 were £30million.
Siemens plc also had 3 principal software development facilities in the UK, for factory automation equipment, for systems development for mainframe computers running on UNIX, and for special-purpose software for communications equipment.
Factory automation equipment was produced in its factory in Congleton in addition to systems hardware design and development. The systems design facility was initially established in 1977 to fulfil the requirements of a Ministry of Defence contract but its operations have since expanded beyond that first project. This part of the company has developed some notable systems and equipment in its ten years of existence: for example, high- powered amplifiers for satellite communication systems based on travelling wave tube technology which have been exported to a number of telephone utilities around the world.[3]
1994 The business and asset of Siemens Plessey Controls Ltd were transferred to Siemens plc