History
The roots of today's OC Oerlikon are to be found in the Werkzeugmaschinenfabrik Oerlikon, which was founded in 1906, and later evolved into the Oerlikon-Bührle Holding AG in 1973. After a restructuring process and the sale of some core assets, the holding changed its name to Unaxis.
The Austrian Victory Industriebeteiligung AG bought a majority of Unaxis stock in 2005 in a highly emotional battle and initiated a restructuring effort.
In May 2006, the company decided to rename itself into OC Oerlikon, a reference to its roots. The "OC" in the name stands for "One Company".
In January 2007, the company integrated the Swiss conglomerate Saurer AG.
Following the economic downturn in 2008 and 2009, the company went through an operational restructuring involving lay-offs and major changes in the management team. A proposal for recapitalisation was met with approval at the Annual General Meeting on May 18, 2010. The recapitalisation reduced the group's debt by CHF 998 million and brought the company CHF 276 million in new liquidity.
In 2012, Oerlikon Solar was divested to Tokyo Electron Limited.
Read more about this topic: Oerlikon Corporation
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)