ThyssenKrupp

History

ThyssenKrupp is the result of a merger of two German steel companies, Thyssen AG founded in 1891 under the name Gewerkschaft Deutscher Kaiser and Krupp founded in 1811. As early as the 1980s, the companies began negotiations on a merger and began closely cooperating in some business areas. In 1997, the companies combined their flat steel activities, with a full merger completed in March 1999.

Beginnings (1811–1891)

Krupp

Thyssen

Wilhelminian period (1892–1917)

Krupp

Thyssen

Weimar Republic (1918–1933)

Krupp

Thyssen

Third Reich (1933–1945)

Krupp

Thyssen

Mergers and acquisitions

During a period of expansion in 1978, Thyssen AG entered the North American automotive industry with the acquisition of Budd's automotive operations, which became the automotive division of Thyssen and operated in North America as Budd Thyssen, later ThyssenKrupp Budd Co. In October 2006 ThyssenKrupp sold ThyssenKrupp Budd's North American body and chassis operations to Martinrea International Inc.

In 1988, ThyssenKrupp acquired German shock absorber manufacturer Bilstein, where it became a division until 2005, where it became a wholly owned subsidiary.

In 1999, Thyssen (one of the companies of the merger to form ThyssenKrupp Elevator) acquired the elevator division of American-based conglomerate Dover Corporation. Four years later ThyssenKrupp acquired the Korean-based Dongyang Elevator.

In 2005 ThyssenKrupp acquired Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW) in Kiel from One Equity Partners. ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) is now the most important European group of shipbuilders. In addition to HDW Blohm + Voss in Hamburg, as well as Nordseewerke at Emden, also are subsidiaries of TKMS. One Equity Partners holds 25% of the TKMS shares.

In December 2005 ThyssenKrupp acquired 60% of Atlas Elektronik from BAE Systems, with EADS acquiring the remaining 40%.

In August 2007 ThyssenKrupp Materials North America acquired OnlineMetals.com, a small-quantity distributor of semi-finished metals and plastics based in Seattle, Washington.

In early 2008 ThyssenKrupp Aerospace acquired Apollo Metals and Aviation Metals, both suppliers to aerospace and defence based in Kent, Washington.

In June 2012 ThyssenKrupp sold ThyssenKrupp Waupaca to KPS Capital Partners. ThyssenKrupp Waupaca is tier two supplier to the automotive industry, located in Waupaca, Wisconsin.

In April 2014, ThyssenKrupp announced it was in talks to sell its Swedish maritime defence unit to Saab after failing to agree deals with the Swedish government for a new generation of submarines.

US subsidiaries

On 11 May 2007, ThyssenKrupp AG announced an investment of €3.1 billion (US$4.19 billion) for a project consisting of building new carbon steel and stainless steel processing facilities in southern Alabama that would employ 2,700 people when fully operational. The project, along with a multibillion-dollar greenfield steelmaking facility in Brazil, is a cornerstone of ThyssenKrupp's new global expansion strategy into the North American and NAFTA high-value carbon steel markets. The company announced that the investment was increased to $4.6 billion in 2010. As of the date of the announcement, the investment was the largest private economic development investment in Alabama's history and the largest by a German company in the U.S. The site selection announcement came after several months of competition involving several southeastern sites which was eventually narrowed between a site on the Mississippi River in Convent, Louisiana, and a site on the Tombigbee River, in Calvert, Alabama in north Mobile County, about 40 miles north of Mobile. The site in Alabama was eventually chosen. Groundbreaking on the Calvert facilities was held in November 2007. The carbon steel and stainless steel companies are independent and operate under different management teams. Co-locating both facilities on the same site enabled the company to optimize the investment in infrastructure and in some shared processing.

The carbon steel company, ThyssenKrupp Steel USA, which represented seventy percent of the overall project investment and hiring, consists of a state-of-the-art hot strip mill, cold rolling mill, and four hot dip galvanizing lines. The hot strip mill began operations in July 2010, the cold roll mill in September 2010, and the first of the hot dip galvanizing lines in March 2011. The company projects to be fully operational in late 2011 and employ approximately 1,800 people at that time. ThyssenKrupp Stainless USA projects to employ approximately 900 people when fully operational in late 2012. At full production, ThyssenKrupp Steel USA will have the capacity to produce 4 million metric tons of carbon steel for NAFTA customers in the automotive, construction, appliance, pipe and tube, and service center industries. In July 2011, the carbon steel project was awarded "Best Greenfield Technology" by American Metal Market, considered to be the longest continuously published newspaper in the metals industry. ThyssenKrupp Stainless USA built a cold roll mill and is in the process of building a meltshop.

Additionally, the Alabama State Port Authority invested over $100 million to build a state-of-the-art transloading slab terminal on the southern tip of Pinto Island in Mobile Bay to service the inbound raw material slabs for the upriver carbon steel facility. Raw material slabs shipped to the Alabama facility from ThyssenKrupp CSA are transloaded from Panamax ships at the terminal onto shallow draft barges for transport upriver to the facility. The terminal is equipped with three wide-span gantry cranes with state-of-the-art magnetic lifting gear designed by ThyssenKrupp, and it utilizes RFID technology to read identifiers on each slab and provide up-to-date inventory records that include each slab's location and weight. The same magnetic technology is also used at ThyssenKrupp's Calvert facility. The terminal was necessary to Alabama's award of the project since the Tombigbee River depth and lack of turning basins prohibit deep draft ship navigation to the site in Calvert.

The world steel industry peaked in 2007, just as the company spent $12 billion to build the two most modern mills in the world, in Alabama and Brazil. The worldwide Great Recession started in 2008. Heavy cutbacks in construction combined with sharply lowered demand, and prices fell 40%. ThyssenKrupp lost $11 billion on its two new plants, which sold steel below the cost of production. ThyssenKrupp's stainless steel division, Inoxum, including the stainless portion of the US plant, was sold to Finnish stainless steel company Outokumpu in 2012. Finally in 2013, ThyssenKrupp offered the remaining portion of the plant for sale at under $4 billion.

On February 26, 2014, ThyssenKrupp sold their Calvert carbon steel facility to ArcelorMittal and Nippon Steel for $1.55 billion.

In April 2015, ThyssenKrupp announced it would be investing more than €800 million in the North American region by 2020 to take advantage of the economy’s reindustrialization.

Sale of Tailored Blanks

In September 2012 ThyssenKrupp agreed to sell the automotive components manufacturer Tailored Blanks to the China-based Wuhan Iron and Steel Corporation for an undisclosed price. At the time of the agreement Tailored Blanks had annual sales of around 700 million euros and a global market share of about 40 percent in automotive laser-welded blanks.

Products and sales

ThyssenKrupp generates 33% of its consolidated sales in its home market. The rest of the EU (European Union) (28%) and the NAFTA region (21%) are the key trading partners for business and exports outside Germany. ThyssenKrupp companies hold leading positions with their products in numerous international markets. ThyssenKrupp is the world's leading producer of tailored blank steel. Tailored blanks weld steel materials of differing thicknesses.

Business areas

The operations are organized in six business areas:

Price fixing

In November 2006, five elevator manufacturers, including ThyssenKrupp, were found guilty of price fixing by the EU, over nine years, along with competitors Otis Elevator Co., Schindler Group, Kone and Mitsubishi Elevator Europe. A few months later on 21 February 2007, ThyssenKrupp was fined US$629 million (€479 million) by the EU (Otis was fined $295 million). The EU Competition Commission reported that the companies had worked to rig bids for procurement contracts, share markets, and fix prices between at least 1995 and 2004. The Commission reported that the companies "did not contest the facts" found by EU regulators, noting none of the accused requested a hearing to answer the allegations. The fines totaled US$1.3 billion.

In July 2012 the German Bundeskartellamt served fines totalling €124.5million on ThyssenKrupp GfT Gleistechnik GmbH, Essen (€103m), Stahlberg Roensch GmbH, Seevetal, which since 2010 belongs to the Vossloh group (€13m), TSTG Schienen Technik GmbH & Co. KG, Duisburg, a subsidiary of the Voestalpine group (€4.5m) and Voestalpine BWG GmbH & Co. KG, Butzbach, another Voestalpine subsidiary (€4m) for price fixing of steel railway lines and points blades supplied to Deutsche Bahn, the German state railway. According to Andreas Mundt, president of the Bundeskartellamt, "For many years the rail suppliers have guaranteed each other virtually constant shares of Deutsche Bahn's contract volume. The cartel members monitored compliance with the contract volume quotas, assigned each other projects and set protective prices in order to steer the contract award process.” The proceedings had been triggered by an application for leniency filed by the Austrian company Voestalpine AG. Investigations into further companies are ongoing.

Turin plant fire and trial

On 6 December 2007, an accident inside a plant in Turin, Italy caused the death of seven steelworkers. It appears that a damaged manifold burst and showered the workers with flaming coolant oil; they attempted to extinguish the flames with water, but instead caused a flash fire.

The plant was scheduled to be closed in February and was understaffed, but due to a delay in the other plant in Terni, Turin's workers were often forced to perform overtime in the last months. Four days before the accident, another fire took place, without any casualties. The accident happened around 1:30 am, after four hours of overtime. When the workers tried to use nearby extinguishers, they found three out of five depleted. A technician admitted to being instructed by a manager of the company to fill every extinguisher in the factory the day after the accident, in order to mislead investigators. The Italian magistrates are still examining the causes of the fire, with workers describing lax safety measures to investigators. During the investigations, a document was seized from Harald Espenhahn (CEO of the Italian division of ThyssenKrupp). The document stated that the only survivor should be taken to court, because of that person making accusations of ThyssenKrupp in the media. The document also stated that the fire was due to the fact that the workers were "distracted".

CEO Espenhahn has been charged by the State prosecutor of Turin with "voluntary multiple murder with eventual malice" ("omicidio volontario multiplo con dolo eventuale"), while five other managers and executives have been charged with "culpable murder with conscious guilt". All have been also charged with "malicious omission of safety measures". On Friday 15 April 2011, Espenhahn and all the other indictees were pronounced guilty of all charges; Espenhahn has been sentenced to 16 years and 6 months in jail and to a lifelong ban from holding public offices. Prior to the court case, Espenhahn was transferred from Italy and is now believed to reside in Brazil. On 23 February 2013, the Appellate Court changed the sentence for Espenhahn to culpable murder, not recognizing the voluntary murder, thus reducing the conviction. Convictions for the other managers were reduced as well.

In May 2016 the appeal court has reduced the sentences for Espenhahn down to 9 years and 8 months, the other 5 managers (4 Italians and 1 German) between 6 and 7 years. According to the bilateral laws between Germany and Italy, the convicted can serve the term in his home country and with accordance to this countries' laws. Since accounts of first-degree murder have been appealed down to aggravated negligent manslaughter, the German convicts are expecting further drastic reductions that would eventually not exceed 5 years, according to the statement from the defence of Espenbahn and Priegnitz (the other German manager). It's not yet clear if Italy will exercise extrapolation on Espenhahn from Germany.

Families of the victims shouted and left the court in protest saying "Shame". In earlier incidents as Italy's court agreed for appeal the families cried "Sell outs" in the court room. Families victims had to endure 9 years of court processes to hear the final verdicts.

Incidents

ThyssenKrupp has been the victim of major, organised hacking attacks on several occasions, targeting the company's trade secrets.

On 8 December 2016 it emerged that the company was attacked in February of that year. Internally uncovered in April 2016, it took their IT team around half a year to fix. The hack it thought to have originated from South-East Asia and was successful in retrieving information from various departments, including the plant engineering division.

This is not the first time the company fell victim to hacks. In 2012, ThyssenKrupp and other European companies have been attacked by Chinese sources.