GE Current (Current), a Daintree company based in Cleveland, acquired Forum Inc., a 50-year-old, privately held, Pittsburgh-based architectural linear luminaire company. Forum has manufactured lighting for numerous landmark projects, including the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York, the Cleveland Clinic and the Roberto Clemente Bridge in Pittsburgh.
According to the press release, this transaction expands Current’s architectural portfolio and customization capability, and the additional U.S.-based manufacturing provides greater breadth to its product portfolio for the architectural community. Forum will be able to leverage Current’s innovation, capabilities and patents to help fuel future growth for the brand.
“Forum’s focus on providing high-quality linear solutions for architects, designers and specifiers makes them the ideal partner to expand our lighting portfolio,” says Manish Bhandari, CEO, Current, in the press release. “Forum’s values and customer-centric culture are well aligned with Current. Current will continue to invest in Forum to deliver new solutions, accelerating their growth.”
Jonathan Garret, Forum’s president, said in the release, “Current’s commitment brings the resources that will enable Forum Lighting to continue building on our success within the specification lighting market. We will be able to expand our product selection and reinforce our commitment to offering flexibility and product variation for specifiers, architects and designers.”
Merrimack Group served as financial advisor to Forum. Dickie McCamey and Fredrikson & Byron served as legal counsel to Forum and Current, respectively.
GE Current focuses on commercial and industrial facilities, cities, greenhouses and all specialty applications in between with advanced lighting and intelligent controls.
GE Current was part of General Electric’s legacy commercial and industrial lighting business until the company sold it in 2018 to American Industrial Partners (AIP), a New York-based private equity firm. GE’s consumer lamp business was not part of that transaction, according to a Nov. 2018 article in Electrical Marketing. GE got completely out of the lighting business in May 2020 when it sold its home lighting unit to Savant Systems, MA.
Daintree Networks had been acquired by GE in 2016 to build out its offering in solid-state lighting controls and connected lighting According to a Oct. 2019 article in LEDs magazine, AIP quietly changed the company’s official name from “Current, powered by GE,” to GE Current a Daintree company.