Pilkington
The company was founded in 1826 as a partnership between members of the Pilkington and Greenall families, based in St Helens, Lancashire, England.
The distinctive blue-glass head office tower block on Alexandra Business Park, off Prescot Road, originally used as the firm's world headquarters, and completed in 1964, still dominates the town's skyline.
[2] Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the company struck a series of market agreements with various domestic and European glass manufacturers of varying effectiveness.
[2] European competitors, particularly those based in Belgium, had applied considerable competitive pressure to Britain's glass making industry; Pilkington was less susceptible due to a strong focus on exports and international developments throughout the British Empire and South America.
[2] Pilkington found itself in a relatively strong position in the aftermath of the Second World War, having exclusively fulfilled Britain's wartime requirements and even managing to expand its export activities.
[2] While there was no reintroduction of the pre-war quota arrangements and its historic undertakings with individual merchants were abandoned during 1950, the company still entered an export agreement with its competitors in the European mainland.
Amongst other benefits, these licensing arrangements often helped the company to further its interests, including the expansion of its presence in the European market and even gaining stakes in other manufacturers.
[2] During the 1960s and 1970s, Pilkington used the flow of float royalty payments to finance its investments in float glass plants across several countries, including Argentina, Australia, Canada and Sweden, and also to acquire major existing flat and safety glass producers and plants in the United States (Libbey Owens Ford), Germany and France.
[8] In late 1985, Pilkington was the subject of a hostile takeover bid from BTR Industries, a large British-based conglomerate group, which valued the company at $1.64 billion.
[citation needed] Although the patents had expired by the early 1980s, Pilkington had licensed their use, and required the licensees to keep the details of the float glass process secret.
It was claimed this was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, because Pilkington's patents had expired and any trade secrets which it might have had in the process used by the licensees had long since become publicly known.
[15] During 2008, the European Commission imposed a fine of €357 million on Pilkington, along with three other glass manufacturers, for its part in a five-year price-fixing scheme used in car windscreens.
Soon afterward, Thomson-CSF acquired W Vinten Ltd, a British reconnaissance equipment manufacturer, including the Joint Reconnaissance Pod, who now operate as Thales Optronics (Bury St Edmunds) Ltd.[citation needed] In November 2006, Thales Optronics Limited announced the closure of its manufacturing facility in Taunton, Somerset, with the loss of 180 jobs.
[23] The initial bid and the first revised bid were not accepted, however, on 16 February 2006, NSG increased its offer for the 80 percent it did not already own to 165 pence per share (£1.8 billion or $3.14 billion in total) and this was accepted by Pilkington's major institutional shareholders, enabling NSG to compulsorily acquire by scheme of arrangement the smaller holdings of other shareholders,[24] many of them being existing and retired employees, who had not wished to support the takeover.
