The General Electric Company or GEC was a major British-based industrial conglomerate, involved in consumer and defence electronics, communications and engineering. The company was once a constituent of the FT 30 and FTSE 100 Index.
In December 1999, GEC was renamed to Marconi plc and became a telecommunications focused company; when its defence arm, Marconi Electronic Systems was amalgamated with British Aerospace to form BAE Systems. The financial troubles that followed the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2000/2001, led to the May 2003 restructuring of Marconi plc to Marconi Corporation plc.
In 2005, Ericsson purchased the bulk of Marconi Corporation plc, along with its principal subsidiary, Marconi Communications. The remainder of the business was renamed Telent.
Famous quotes containing the words general, electric and/or company:
“The first general store opened on the ‘Cold Saturday’ of the winter of 1833 ... Mrs. Mary Miller, daughter of the store’s promoter, recorded in a letter: ‘Chickens and birds fell dead from their roosts, cows ran bellowing through the streets’; but she failed to state what effect the freeze had on the gala occasion of the store opening.”
—Administration in the State of Sout, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow, outvalues all the theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is no such thing as “the Queen’s English.” The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)