GEC Plessey Telecommunications (GPT) was a British manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, notably the System X telephone exchange. The company was founded in 1988 as a joint venture between GEC and the British electronics, defence and telecommunications company Plessey. The next year, after a joint holding company of GEC and the German conglomerate Siemens acquired Plessey, GPT was converted into a 60/40 GEC/Siemens joint venture. The GPT name ceased to be used in the mid-1990s, and in 1998 the company was amalgamated into Siemens Communications.
History
Formation
The evolution of GPT can be traced to 1986, when the General Electric Company (GEC) attempted a takeover of Plessey, a British-based international electronics, defence and telecommunications company founded in 1917; the takeover was barred by regulatory authorities. As an amicable solution, GEC and Plessey merged their telecommunications businesses (25,000 employees at the time) on 1 April 1988 as GEC Plessey Telecommunications. GPT was a world leader in many fields, for example Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) technology, and the merger brought the two companies responsible for developing and building the System X telephone exchange together, which was supposed to make selling System X simpler.
GEC/Siemens joint venture: 1989–1998
In 1989, GEC and the German conglomerate Siemens made a hostile takeover of the Plessey Company through their joint holding company, GEC Siemens plc. While most of Plessey's assets were divided between the companies, GPT remained a joint venture with a 60/40 shareholding by GEC and Siemens respectively. In 1991, because Plessey no longer existed, GEC Plessey Telecommunications was renamed to just the initial letters GPT The majority of Marconi Corporation's businesses (including Marconi Communications) were sold to Ericsson in 2005,