History
The company started as a division of the agricultural machine business, Food Machinery Corporation (FMC), when they won a US government contract to build LVTs and became a weapon manufacturer during World War II. Bowen McLaughlin York (later the BMY division of Harsco Corporation) also began building tanks around this time and airplanes.
Following a massive decline in orders for tracked combat vehicles between 1983 and 1994 FMC and the Harsco Corporation agreed in January 1994 to combine their defense businesses to form United Defense. The new company owned the former FMC California-based Ground Systems Division and Harsco's Pennsylvania-based BMY Combat Systems Division. The new company restructured its operations to concentrate final assembly and testing to Pennsylvania.
In September 2000, UDI purchased Bofors Weapon Systems AB of Sweden, subsequently renamed Bofors Defence.
UDI was subject to a takeover bid by rival General Dynamics in 1997 but instead chose a (lower) bid from private equity firm The Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group floated the company in 2001 but retained a share of the company.
Read more about this topic: United Defense
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“The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
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“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)