ABB, founded in 1988, originated from the merger of two century-old European companies.
One is the Swedish ASEA company (ASEA) founded in 1883, and the other is the Swiss Brown, Boveri & Cie company (Brown, Boveri & Cie) founded in 1891.
Before the merger, both companies experienced a long and glorious development history.
First, let’s take a look at the history of Asia, which was born earlier.
In 1883, Ludwig Fredholm and engineer Jonas Weinstr?m founded an electrical appliance factory in Stockholm called EA to produce lighting appliances and generators. .
In 1889, Jonas invented the three-phase system used in generators, transformers, and electric machines.
The following year, the two merged with the WGEK company of Jonas's brother Glen Weinstr?m to form Swedish General Electric Company, referred to as ASEA, which provides Swedish industrial enterprises with Electrical equipment.
Asia Company stands at the forefront of the electrical age. With the arrival of the new industrial revolution, it is rapidly developing the electrical appliance industry.
In 1893, Assia built the first three-phase transmission system in Sweden. Soon, Asiya went abroad.
By 1914, Asia's branches had opened in the United Kingdom, Spain, Russia, Finland, Denmark and other countries, establishing a leading position in the industry.
However, the double blow of World War I and the Russian Revolution caused Asiya to suffer a great blow.
After several years of depression, CEO Edstrom led the company out of trouble.
In 1926, Asia supplied locomotives and converters for Sweden's first electrified railway, the Stockholm-Gothenburg Railway. In 1932, Asia built the world's largest self-cooling transformer.
Soon, Asia resumed its pre-war development through mergers and acquisitions and further expansion of overseas markets.
However, World War II followed.
Although Sweden remained neutral during World War II, the Nazis forcibly took possession of Assia's businesses in other parts of Europe, and Assia still suffered heavy losses.
Despite this, Asia still based itself on the country and achieved certain innovation and progress. In 1942, it built the world's first 120MVA, 220kV transformer in Stockholm.
After the end of World War II, Asia gained new development while recovering.
In 1947, the company expanded into the US market.
In 1952, the company provided electrical equipment and technology for the world's first 400 kV AC transmission line.
While developing the power industry, Asia has also expanded its business scope.
In 1953, Asia used high-pressure technology to manufacture artificial diamonds, becoming the first manufacturer in the world to produce synthetic diamonds.
The following year they installed the world's first high-voltage direct current transmission line.
Entering the 1960s, the new president Kurt Nicolin carried out in-depth reforms of Asia, introduced the division system, and redeployed the company's department structure, especially the new electronics division, which marked the The company transformed from a manufacturer of high-voltage electrical equipment into an electronics and electrical company.
During this period, Asia's development even involved cutting-edge technological fields such as nuclear power.
In 1968, the company's nuclear power division merged with the Swedish state-owned Atomic Energy Agency to form ASEA Atom.
Four years later, Assia built Sweden's first nuclear power plant.
In 1978, Asia invented and launched the world's first industrial robots.
In the late 1970s, Asia faced a crisis of recession and decline. In 1980, the young new executive director and CEO Barnevik took office and turned the decline around.
By 1987, Asia had become an internationally renowned company mastering cutting-edge technology.
On the other side of Europe, in 1891, Charles E. L. Brown and Walter Boffrey established the Brown Buffray Company, referred to as BBC, in Baden, Switzerland.
Soon after, Brownfield became the first company to deliver high-voltage electricity.
The small size of Switzerland soon made the BBC realize that the whole of Europe was the market suitable for its development.
Just entering the 20th century, in 1901, BBC built Europe's first steam turbine.
In the early days, BBC mainly produced motors and power generation equipment for electric locomotives to supply the entire European railway system.
While undertaking European orders, the BBC in Switzerland also opened branches overseas to further expand international business.
In 1919, through the transfer of patent rights, the BBC authorized the British manufacturer Vickers to manufacture and sell the company's products, thus officially opening the British market.
Despite being in an era when trade protectionism prevailed, the BBC still went abroad and achieved better development.
The establishment and development of overseas agents enabled the BBC to gain huge overseas sales revenue and gradually grow.
By the early 1920s, the BBC had established subsidiaries in Italy, Germany, Norway, Austria and many countries in the Balkans.
However, the BBC suffered huge losses due to the devaluation of the French franc and German mark and increased domestic costs.
In 1927, the British Vickers terminated the cooperation agreement between the two parties, and the BBC lost even its original British market.
But nothing can resist the trend of the electrical age.
Although the BBC has suffered a heavy blow in overseas markets, the industrial modernization boom sweeping Europe has given the BBC new opportunities, and the demand for strong power equipment is huge.
In the subsequent period, the BBC made great progress in locomotives.
In 1933, the BBC obtained a patent for welded turbine rotors.
The BBC also built the first gas turbine for power generation in 1939, and developed the first high-speed locomotive with a bogie with a dedicated drive shaft in 1944.
In the years that followed, BBC repeatedly achieved firsts and pioneers in the field of electrical engineering, and set multiple records for the world's largest capacity transformer.
In other areas such as electrical engineering, the BBC has also made great achievements.
BBC developed the world's first gearless cement transmission in 1969.
The BBC has gradually become a comprehensive company.
Entering the 1970s, the BBC made extensive corporate organizational adjustments, integrated overseas subsidiaries, and formed five groups: the German Group, the French Group, the Swiss Group, and the Medium-sized Group (seven distributed in Europe and factories in Latin America) and BB International Group (the remainder of the four groups that are not part of the above).
Each group has five divisions: Power Generation, Electronics, Transmission and Distribution, Electric Traction Equipment and Industrial Equipment.
At this point, the BBC has formed a complete global strategic system and an effective internal organizational structure, with clear responsibilities and division of labor, showing a healthy development trend.
At the same time, the BBC is also vigorously expanding the US market, which it has not yet entered, but the results are not satisfactory.
The BBC entered into long-term joint venture negotiations with Rockwell, an American high-tech military and aerospace application company, but the negotiations failed.
The BBC can only capture a small part of the US market through a few other companies.
From 1974 to 1975, North American sales accounted for only 3.5% of all BBC sales.
Despite this, the BBC achieved new achievements in the international market in the 1970s.
In 1974, the BBC acquired George Kent, a British control and equipment manufacturing company, adding product lines to the BBC, and the new company was renamed BBK (Brown Boveri Kent).
In the 1980s, the BBC also achieved better development.
BBC has made adjustments to research and development: branches generally only conduct product research and development for the local market, while theoretical research and development work is uniformly undertaken by the parent company's research and development institutions.
This change can make more effective use of research and development funds and put the BBC in a better development system.
In 1984, the first BBC generator was installed at the world's largest hydroelectric power station in Itaipu, South America, with nine installed in a row.
By 1987, Brownfield had made great progress in many aspects such as electrical power, and many of its inventions attracted worldwide attention.
In 1987, these two European companies that had been around for about a century decided to come together.
In August, the two companies announced their decision to cooperate to establish ABB Co., Ltd., "A" is taken from AREA, and "BB" stands for Braun Beverley.
The company will be headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, with the original two companies each owning 50% of the shares.
The newly formed group company began operations on January 5, 1988.
Nikolin, formerly of Asia, and Rutweiler, formerly of the BBC, both serve as co-chairmen, and Barnevik, CEO of Asia, serves as the CEO of the new company.
The two European electrical giants were close competitors. This historic merger is a match made in heaven. It not only greatly saves the high research and development costs of superconductors, high-voltage chips and power plant control systems, Asia The advantages in the Nordic market perfectly fit and complement the BBC's advantages in Central and Southern Europe.
Moreover, in the one or two years before the merger, the BBC developed at a slower pace than Asia.
Banevik hopes to increase Asia's 5.5% profit margin and BBC's 1.5% profit margin to ABB's 10%, achieving a cooperation effect where one plus one is far greater than two.
In order to achieve this ambitious goal, the newly established ABB quickly started an expansion plan.
In the first year of business, the company acquired 15 companies and rapidly expanded the group's content organization in a cooperative manner.
This year, ABB's operating revenue was US$17 billion and it had 160,000 employees worldwide.
More importantly, the new ABB has made up for the development limitations of the two established European companies in the North American market.
Within two years of its establishment, ABB acquired 55 companies in Western Europe and North America.
Among them, the acquisition of the American power giant Westinghouse Electric Company in 1989 marked ABB's official foothold in the North American market.
In the same year, ABB invested US$1.56 billion to purchase Combustion Engineering (CE). However, no one expected that this transaction would sow the seeds of disaster for ABB.
In the 1990s, ABB began to ambitiously expand its business scope to Central and Eastern Europe, and was preparing to expand its business scope to Asia.
In the increasingly mature markets of Western Europe and North America, ABB has also gradually streamlined its staffing, reformed its internal structure, and focused its employees on emerging markets such as Central and Eastern Europe and Asia, and also in these emerging markets. Conducting mergers and acquisitions and expansion.
Clear development ideas allow ABB to still have new systems and continue to develop in an orderly manner after strong mergers and acquisitions.
On January 1, 1996, ABB was elected as the most advanced company in technology and management in Europe.
At the same time, ABB in the 1990s was also quite effective in technological innovation.
In 1990, ABB released Azipod, an electric propulsion system component installed on the outside of the ship's hull. It has propulsion and steering functions to improve the ship's mobility, efficiency and usable space.
In 1998, ABB opened the world's first high-voltage power plant. In the same year, ABB released the FlexPicker parallel robot, specially used in the picking and packaging industry.
Through the readjustment of the global market, continued expansion and continuous innovation in technology, ABB has achieved Barnevik's goal and achieved a success where one plus one is far greater than two.
However, when ABB was booming, the turmoil of its subsidiary Combustion Engineering Company (CE) caused ABB to suffer successive losses and even be on the verge of bankruptcy.
Because CE’s boiler products used asbestos containing carcinogens as insulation materials, people who had come into contact with these products filed a class action lawsuit against ABB.
There are more than 100,000 plaintiffs, and ABB has paid a total of US$865 million in compensation.
Although ABB sold CE to Alstom of France in 2000, ABB still bears liability for compensation.
The lawsuit was followed by a huge decline in the company's reputation and profits.
In 2001, ABB suffered a loss of US$691 million and faced a bankruptcy crisis.
The asbestos crisis of a CE company almost brought ABB’s electrical empire to its knees on the threshold of the new century.
Faced with the challenges of compensation, debt and a bloated and complex organization, the board reacted quickly.
Chairman Jürgen Dorman concurrently served as CEO in September 2002. He was appointed at a critical moment and began to implement system reforms and redefine the business focus.
As the negotiations progressed in an orderly manner, ABB obtained a bank loan, and the lawsuit ended with CE's bankruptcy.
ABB has experienced heavy losses and is back on the road again.
In 2004, ABB released its expanded automation system 800xA, which is used in many large and medium-sized processing plants in the fields of oil and gas, chemical industry, papermaking, metals, mining and life sciences, providing continuous improvement in various fields. production efficiency plays an important role.
In 2008, ABB connected the power transmission networks of Norway and the Netherlands through the world's longest submarine high-voltage DC cable.
In 2010, ABB built a UHV DC transmission line from the Xiangjiaba Hydropower Station in southwest China to Shanghai, with a total length of approximately 2,000 kilometers, greatly advancing the construction of transmission lines in China.
In 2012, ABB successfully designed and developed a hybrid high-voltage DC circuit breaker suitable for creating large-scale regional DC grids.
This breakthrough solved a technical problem that had existed for more than a hundred years.
Today, ABB, which has witnessed glory and experienced vicissitudes of life, is facing the challenges of the new era with a new attitude.
Since the electrical age, AREA and BBC have created numerous world-renowned achievements. Today’s ABB deserves our higher expectations for its future.