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     electronics sector M&A (studies)

This page supplements the note on merger & acquisition benchmarks in the electronics sector.

It covers -

• orientations
• corporate histories

     orientations

Points of entry to the literaturte on consumer electronics include Alfred Chandler's Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics & Computer Industries (New York: Free Press 2001), Simon Partner's Assembled In Japan: Electrical Goods & The Making Of The Japanese Consumer (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1999), Bob Johnstone's We Were Burning: Japanese Entrepreneurs & The Forging of the Electronic Age (New York: Basic Books 1999), An International History of the Recording Industry (London: Cassell 1998) by Pekka Gronow & Ilpo Saunio and Sources of Industrial Leadership: Studies of Seven Industries (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1999) edited by David Mowery & Richard Nelson.

     corporate histories

The literature on specific enterprises is uneven but often extensive.

For Philips see The history of NV Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken (Vol 1: The origin of the Dutch Incandescent Lamp Industry, to 1891) (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1986) and The history of NV Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken (Vol 2: A Company of Many Parts, 1891 till 1918) (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1988) by A. Heerding and The history of Philips Electronics NV (Vol 3: The Development of N.V. Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken into a major electrical group) (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff 1992) and The history of Philips Electronics NV (Vol 4: Under German rule) (Zaltbommel: European Library 1999) by I.J. Blanken. Marcel Metze has produced two studies of Philips in crisis - unfortunately not available in English. They are Kortsluiting (Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Sun 1991) and Let's make things better: Philips 1990-1997 (Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Sun 1997)

For Siemens see The Siemens Company: Its Historical Role in the Progress of Electrical Engineering, 1847-1980 (Berlin: Publicis 1987) by Sigfrid von Weiher & Herbert Goetzler, Jürgen Kocka's Unternehmensverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens, 1847-1914 (Stuttgart: 1969) and Industrial Culture & Bourgeois Society in Modern Germany (Oxford: Berghahn 1999), Wilfred Feldkirchen's Werner Von Siemens: Inventor & International Entrepreneur (Columbus: Ohio State Uni Press 1994) and Siemens: 1918-1945 (Columbus: Ohio State Uni Press 1999). The latter volume and History of the House of Siemens (New York: Arno Press 1977) by Georg Siemens, first published 1957, might ideally be read in conjunction with a study such as West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past, 1945-1955 (Chapel Hill: Uni of North Carolina Press 2001) by Jonathan Wiesen and Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany Under the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1997) by Ulrich Herbert.

Useful introductions to AEG are Peter Strunk's Die AEG, Aufstieg und Niedergang einer Industrielegende (Berlin: Nicolai 1999), Manfred Pohl's Emil Rathenau un die AEG (Berlin: Hase & Koehler 1988) and Astrid Zipfel's Public Relations in der Elektroindustrie - Die Firmen Siemens und AEG 1847 bis 1939 (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag 1997). The latter complements David Nye's Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric, 1890-1930 (Cambridge: MIT Press 1985) and Tilman Buddensieg's Industriekultur: Peter Behrens and the AEG, 1907-1914 (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1984).

Works on Thorn, EMI and GEC include Anatomy of a Merger: A History of GEC, AEI & English Electric (London: Cape 1970) by R Jones & O Marriot, From Making to Music: The History of Thorn-EMI (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1996) by S A Pandit, and the celebratory Since Records Began: EMI's First One Hundred Years (London: Batsford 1997) by Peter Martland.

For GE ans subsidiary RCA see Bernard Carlson's Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson & the Rise of General Electric, 1870-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1991), Leonard Reich's The Making of American Industrial Research: Science & Business at GE and Bell, 1876-1926 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1985) and George Wise' Willis R Whitney: General Electric & the Origins of US Industrial Research (New York: Columbia Uni Press 1985), Ronald Kline's Steinmetz: Engineer & Socialist (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press 1992), Thomas Hughes' Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press 1983), Robert Sobel's RCA (New York: Stein & Day 1986), Margaret Graham's RCA & the Videodisc (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1986), Homer Oldfield's King of the Seven Dwarfs: General Electric's Ambiguous Challenge to the Computer Industry (Los Alamitos: IEEE Computer Society Press 1996), Benjamin Aldridge's The Victor Talking Machine Co (New York 1964) and Jefferson Cowie's Capital Moves: RCA's Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labour (New York: New Press 1999). The greatly overrated 'Neutron Jack' Welch features in Welch: An American Icon (New York: Wiley 2001) by Janet Lowe, The New GE: How Jack Welch Revived an American Institution (New York: McGraw-Hill 1992) by Robert Slater, Jack: Straight From the Gut (New York: Warner 2001) by Jack Welch & John Byrne and Thomas O'Boyle's At Any Cost: Jack Welch, General Electric & the Pursuit of Profit (New York: Random 2001).




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