Osram acquires German lighting fixture company Siteco
Siemens announced that its Osram lighting unit is acquiring Siteco Lighting GmbH, Traunreut, Germany, from Barclays Private Equity. Siteco is a leading European lighting company with a worldwide workforce of 1,250 and revenue of around €220 million (approximately $306 million US) in fiscal year 2010. The company supplies luminaires and lighting systems for urban infrastructure such as public and commercial buildings, streets, tunnels, airports and sports stadiums.
Siteco Lighting produces luminaires in Germany and China and has over 15 sales companies in Europe, as well as a global sales network. This acquisition therefore provides Osram with broad access to the market for lighting solutions and a modern range of products in the field of interior and exterior lighting, Siemens said.
GE going on the road to promote electric vehicles
GE is taking its electric-vehicle (EV) business on tour in seven U.S. cities to bring GE experts together with local businesses, industry leaders and public sector stakeholders for educational workshops, test drives and dialogue on the business case for EV ecosystems.
GE has already committed to purchase 25,000 electric vehicles by 2015 for its own fleet and for fleet customers. The company is hosting the “EV Experience Tour” to help other businesses and key stakeholders understand technical and business approaches for deploying pure electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Each day-long stop in cities along the tour will include presentations by GE executives and community leaders, workshops to help stakeholders with EV planning, deployment, and integration strategies and test drives. Some of the corporations GE will work with on the tour include GM, Ford, Toyota, Navistar, Smith Electric Vehicles and Mitsubishi.
Tour dates scheduled so far are: San Francisco, March 10; Seattle, March 15; Los Angeles, March 17; and San Diego, March 22. Additional dates for GE's EV Experience Tour will be announced in Austin, Texas; New York; and Washington, D.C. for later this spring.
IES nails big cabling jobs across U.S.
Integrated Electrical Services (IES), Houston, recently won several major data communications projects. The projects include upgrading wireless local area network infrastructures, installing voice and data cabling systems, upgrading Ethernet network technology, installing fiber-optic backbone systems and distributed antenna systems (DAS), and other communications and audio/visual build outs and upgrades. These projects include upgrading the wireless local area network (LAN) infrastructure for the University of Phoenix, a provider of online and on-site classes, at 350 sites across the country; installing a voice and data cabling infrastructure for a new multi-use facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory; and upgrading network technology at several public schools in Roanoke, Va. In other news at the company, IES said its Communications Division has recently expanded its operations with the opening of its office in Southern California.