History
Alvis became part of Rover in 1965, which ended the company's car manufacturing in 1967 to allow it to concentrate on the manufacture of armoured vehicles. In 1968 Rover and its Alvis subsidiary were incorporated into the Leyland Motor Corporation later British Leyland or BL. In 1981 the then nationalised BL sold the Alvis business to United Scientific Holdings for £27 million. United Scientific was a manufacturer of military sighting products.
In 1992 United Scientific adopted the name Alvis plc.
In October 1997 Alvis acquired Hägglunds which was later renamed Alvis Hagglunds AB. In September 1998 Alvis acquired the armoured vehicle business of GKN in a deal which saw GKN take a 29.9% stake in Alvis. GKN's shareholding was purchased by BAE Systems in September 2003 for £73 million.
In early 2000 Alvis sold a share of its Avimo Group optronics subsidiary to Thomson-CSF and sold all of its remaining shareholding to Thales Group (the renamed Thomson-CSF) in 2001.
In 2002 Alvis acquired Vickers Defence Systems from Rolls-Royce for £16 million and merge it with its existing UK business to form Alvis Vickers. The acquisition of Vickers brought the Challenger tank into Alvis' portfolio, as well as Vickers' successful military bridging division and its South African subsidiary Vickers OMC.
Read more about this topic: Alvis Plc
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.”
—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)