Lucent Consolidations, Mergers, and Spin-Offs

One of the world’s most recognized names in technologies is Lucent technologies. Their name is one of a brand that has been tested and true throughout the years. How is it that such a company got started, you may ask?

As with many industries, such as Lucent, there is a tendency towards consolidation. A look back at the industrial revolution’s history shows that in spades. Many, many companies as diverse as railroad organizations, to steel companies, to retail operations, to mining outfits, to metalworking firms have undergone consolidation in an industrial sense at one point in their lifecycles.

Companies grow and as they grow, they tend to gobble up smaller (profitable) corporations that can help their bottom line increase in areas where they may lack as a business. Or, sometimes, companies want to diversify and get involved in a different field or expertise and add a new line of work to their portfolio.

Whatever the reasons behind consolidations, the opposite sometimes happens – this is the case with this company. When money in the telecom industry started to be made less in the manufacture of telecom industry and finished goods and more in services and network maintenance, it was spun off as the manufacturing arm of AT&T, the telecom giant. Clearly, industry works in strange ways sometimes, but is usually beneficial to the consumer. The story of this one truly American company shows us how business works to change at the drop of a hat to become more lean and efficient.