Siemens - history, share and fields of activity
Created: 01/29/2022, 19:14
The lettering logo of the German industrial group Siemens © Daniel Karmann / dpa
Siemens can look back on almost two hundred years of history.
The DAX group is one of the first multinational German companies and has regularly realigned itself over the course of its existence.
Berlin/Munich – Siemens stands for the diversity and potential of German technology.
The international conglomerate is represented with various divisions in the leading German index DAX and stands for agile strategies and orientation to the needs of the future.
Siemens: Writing history with electrical engineering
When the engineer Werner Siemens laid the foundation stone for the company in 1847, it was not possible to foresee which areas and divisions today's conglomerate would one day include.
The foundation of Siemens was communication using telegraphs, which was pioneering at the time.
This was where the focus of the business lay, in addition to Werner Siemens, the precision mechanic Johann Halske was one of the founding members.
The earliest premises consisted of little more than a small workshop, but thanks to the popular technology products not only for telegraphs, but also for the railway systems that were then under construction and expansion, the company grew quickly.
Forty years later, Werner Siemens was knighted for his lifetime achievement.
Early locations abroad
The expansion of Siemens began quite early - which makes the company one of the first German "multinationals". In 1863 the first foreign branch was established in Woolwich, UK, where cables were manufactured. In England, the company operated under the name of Siemens Brothers & Co. Twenty years later, the company expanded to Russia, also with a cable factory in St. Petersburg, and in 1892 the Japanese company Siemens & Halske Japan Agency.
The attempt to gain a foothold in the USA was less successful, because the factory set up there in a German-American cooperation, with which it was planned to serve the needs of the US railroad companies, burned down in 1894, only two years after its completion. completely off.
The company expansion meant that Siemens was represented in 49 countries immediately before the First World War.
With clever strategy through two world wars
Both world wars and the global economic crisis of 1929 left their mark on Siemens, but as early as the 1930s the company began to expand its business areas beyond electrical engineering solutions.
Added:
Electric household appliances
Warmth and heating concepts
Technology for broadcasting and telephony
Electron microscopes and their components
measurement technologies
medical technology
The company also boomed because the order situation was very good as a result of the National Socialist war economy.
In time for the end of the war, the management prepared for the expected defeat by dividing the German production over several locations.
In this way, Siemens escaped a break-up that other large corporations suffered.
However, the foreign locations were lost.
Siemens: Future-oriented divisions today
The first century of Siemens' existence was characterized by strategic takeovers and mergers. In the early years of the company, Siemens-Schuckertwerke and Siemens-Reiniger-Werke were established alongside the original Siemens & Halske AG. From 1966 these three sectors were combined to form today's Siemens AG. Larger takeovers during the years of the economic boom included Zuse KG, a pioneer in IT, and the lighting manufacturer Osram. The merger with Bosch ensured comprehensive market coverage for electrical and household appliances.
From the 1980s, this policy changed – now Siemens was to become more agile and flexible by splitting it up into individual divisions.
This should enable the company to better respond to the changing and increasingly international business world.
This resulted in a total of fifteen divisions that were managed centrally.
They include communication systems, automation and security technologies, medical technology, switching and plant engineering, semiconductor manufacturing and power generation and related services.
The important segments of traffic and automotive technology were also given a high degree of autonomy.
Group restructuring after the turn of the millennium
The fundamental restructuring of Siemens, which initially provided for a division into the four sectors of energy, infrastructure, health care and industry from 2008, is a logical further development of the company's original 15 divisions.
Formal spin-offs began in the 2010s, for example in the mobility division as Siemens Mobility in the form of a GmbH.
The healthcare division, on the other hand, went public as Siemens Healthineers, and the energy division went public under the company name Siemens Energy.
In 2006, Siemens parted ways with semiconductor construction, which was outsourced under the company name Infineon, and the computer division in cooperation with Fujitsu was also given up.
In the future, too, one can expect that the company will react flexibly to changes in its business environment and new requirements for mobility and supply solutions.
Siemens: The company and the board of directors in transition
Until the First World War, the Siemens board of directors and the management of the company were almost entirely in the hands of the Siemens family.
In addition to the company founder and his two sons, Werner Siemens' brother Carl was one of the driving forces behind the expansion.
The Siemens family maintained its influence on the company until 1981, but since 1956 in the form of the chairmanship of the supervisory board.
Management was handed over after the Second World War, all the more so with the restructuring of Siemens, which left the CEOs of the individual divisions extensive freedom under the control of the board.
With all the entrepreneurial successes of Siemens and its subsidiaries, it should not go unmentioned that individual members of the Managing Board or the Managing Board as a whole have repeatedly been subjected to allegations, including in the course of the corruption scandal involving bribes, which came to light from 2008, but also because of of price fixing or circumventing sanctions against Iran or Russia, for example.
Siemens: Shift in favor of locations abroad
Today, Siemens AG, including its subsidiaries, some of which are listed on the stock exchange, is a successful conglomerate that has detached itself from its original focus on electrical engineering and can offer a wide range of products and services.
Most of them are produced worldwide - only around a third of the employees in the company (86,000 in 2021) are based in Germany.
Although Siemens has more than 120 locations in Germany alone, it is also present in 190 countries worldwide with production facilities, offices and representative offices.
As a result, the number of employees has also largely shifted abroad. In 2020 there were 203,000 employees, and a year later there were already 217,000 people at the foreign locations.
Siemens: More than just a share in the DAX 40
The Siemens share benefits in particular from the flexible company management and repeated restructuring.
Investors have been able to trade Siemens AG shares since 1899, and with the reorganization and spin-off of individual divisions, the shares of Siemens Healthineers and Siemens Energy were added.
Shareholders appreciate the performance of the share and the group.
During the Corona year 2020, Siemens AG achieved sales totaling 57 billion euros and profits of more than 4 billion euros - after taxes.
Siemens Energy and Siemens Healthineers
Siemens can also score points with shares in various areas: on the one hand, the conglomerate has been one of the stocks in the main company from the very beginning in the leading German stock index DAX, so it has been listed since the start on July 1, 1988 - and can now, after the expansion to the new DAX 40 in September 2021 claim three positions.
The medical technology division and Siemens Energy have also made the leap into the DAX.
This means that they have outgrown the requirements of Deutsche Börse for medium-sized companies and are among the new giants of the German industrial landscape.
This means that Siemens can buy multiple shares at the same time, and Siemens also offers a point of contact for investors who are orienting their portfolio towards megatrends such as supplying aging societies or the energy transition.