History
Alcatel Alenia Space was established on June 1, 2005 by the merger of Alcatel Space and Alenia Spazio and was owned by Alcatel-Lucent (67%) and Finmeccanica (33%). The company was Europe's largest satellite manufacturer.
The creation of the company was concurrent with the creation of Telespazio Holding. This too was a merger of Finmeccanica and Alcatel businesses (Telespazio and Alcatel's Space Services and Operations respectively).
On April 5, 2006 Alcatel agreed to sell its share of Alcatel Alenia Space (and its 33% share of Telespazio) to Thales Group.
The European Union agreed in this financial operation on April 10, 2007.
Read more about this topic: Thales Alenia Space
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)