The General Electric Company (GEC) was a major British industrial conglomerate involved in consumer and defence electronics, communications, and engineering. Founded in 1886, the company was Britain's largest private employer with over 250,000 employees in the 1980s, and made profits of over £1 billion a year at its peak in the 1990s.
Granada plc was a British conglomerate best known as the parent from 1954 to 2004 of the Manchester-based Granada Television.
Eaton Corporation plc is an American-Irish multinational power management company with 2022 sales of $20.75 billion, founded in the United States with global headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, and a secondary administrative center in Beachwood, Ohio. Eaton has more than 92,000 employees and sells products to customers in more than 175 countries.
LucasVarity plc was a UK automotive parts manufacturer, created by a merger of the British Lucas Industries plc, and the North American Varity Corporation in August 1996.
Cable & Wireless plc was a British telecommunications company. In the mid-1980s, it became the first company in the UK to offer an alternative telephone service to British Telecom. The company later offered cable TV to its customers, but it sold its cable assets to NTL in 2000. It remained a significant player in the UK telecoms market and in certain overseas markets, especially in the former British colonies of the Caribbean, where it was formerly the monopoly incumbent. It was also the main supplier of communication in the British South Atlantic, including Saint Helena and the Falkland Islands. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
GUS plc was a FTSE 100 retailing, manufacturing and financial conglomerate based in the United Kingdom. GUS was an abbreviation of Great Universal Stores, the company's name before 2001, while it was also known as the Glorious Gussies amongst stockbrokers. The company started out as Universal Stores, a mail order business created by the Rose family. In 1931, Isaac Wolfson joined the mail order company and would, through a series of takeovers, turn it into a retail, manufacturing and financial conglomerate, becoming Europe's biggest mail order firm and with over 2,700 physical stores. His son, Leonard Wolfson, followed him as chairman, to be succeeded by his nephews David Wolfson (1996–2000) and Victor Barnett (2000–2002). During the 1980s, the business divested much of its physical retail and manufacturing subsidiaries under Leonard Wolfson to concentrate on mail order, property and finance. In October 2006, the company was split into two separate companies: Experian which continues to exist, and Home Retail Group which was bought by Sainsbury's in 2016.
General Electric Automation and Controls division combines what was formerly known as GE Intelligent Platforms and Alstom's Power Automation and Controls. In 2019, GE Intelligent Platforms was acquired by Emerson Electric and is now called Machine Automation Solutions.
British Electric Traction Company Limited, renamed BET plc in 1985, was a large British industrial conglomerate. It was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but was acquired by Rentokil in 1996, and the merged company is now known as Rentokil Initial.
Smiths Group plc is a British, multinational, diversified engineering business headquartered in London, England. It operates in over 50 countries and employs 14,600 staff.
Westinghouse Rail Systems Ltd was a British supplier of railway signalling and control equipment to the rail industry worldwide. Its head office was in Chippenham, Wiltshire, where it manufactured a variety of mechanical and electrical/electronic railway signalling equipment. It had six other UK offices in Croydon, York, Birmingham, Crawley, Swanley and Glasgow. It also had a number of overseas offices, particularly in the Far East, including Melbourne.
Booker Group Limited is a British wholesale distributor, and subsidiary of Tesco.
Babcock International Group plc is a British aerospace, defence and nuclear engineering services company based in London, England. It specialises in managing complex assets and infrastructure. Although the company has civil contracts, its main business is with public bodies, particularly the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence and Network Rail. The company has four operating sectors, with overseas operations based in Africa, North America, South America, Europe and Australia.
Ultra Electronics Holdings is a British defence and security company. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index until it was acquired by Cobham, which is itself owned by Advent International.
Blue Circle Industries was a British public company manufacturing cement. It was founded in 1900 as the Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers Ltd through the fusion of 24 cement works, mostly around on the Thames and Medway estuaries, together having around a 70% market share of the British cement market. In 1911, the British Portland Cement Manufacturers Ltd was formed by the addition of a further 35 companies, creating a company with an initial 80% of the British cement market.
Rotork plc is a British-based company manufacturing industrial flow control equipment. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
Novar plc was an international building supplies group based in the United Kingdom. Novar was formed in 1921 as Metal Box Company from the coming together of several businesses and trades, including canning and printing. By the 1970s, it was a market leader in these fields. In the 1980s the company diversified into building supplies and at its peak consisted of 30 companies supplying products to the construction and DIY industries.
Redland plc was a leading British building materials business. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
Cameron International Corporation (formerly Cooper Cameron Corporation (CCC) and Cooper Oil Tool, Cameron Iron Works) though now operating under Schlumberger, is a global provider of pressure control, production, processing, and flow control systems as well as project management and aftermarket services for the oil and gas and process industries. Cameron was acquired by Schlumberger (SLB) in 2016, and now operates as 'Cameron, a Schlumberger Company.' At the start of the SLB acquisition in 2015, Cameron employed approximately 23,000 people and delivered $9.8 billion in revenue.
Sir Ian Gibson CBE is a businessman who has chaired or been on the board of a number of Britain's largest companies. His previous chairmanships include British Plaster Board, Wm Morrison Supermarkets, Trinity Mirror, the owner of the Daily Mirror and other regional publications, and Deputy Chairman of ASDA plc. Gibson has also held Non-Executive Directorships at Greggs plc., GKN plc., ASDA plc. and Northern Rock plc.
Chestertons is a British estate agency chain.