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American Standard Companies: A Brief History
July 2007 – At 11:59 on July 31, American Standard completed the spinoff of our vehicle control systems business into a new publicly traded company to be called WABCO (NYSE: WBC). Earlier in the month, American Standard announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to sell the company's worldwide Bath and Kitchen products business to funds advised by Bain Capital Partners, LLC, a leading global private investment firm, for $1.755 billion in cash.
February 2007 – American Standard, now at $11.2 billion in revenues, announces plans to separate the company into three focused, better understood companies to create greater shareowner value than the current structure. It plans to focus on its $6.8 billion global market-leading air conditioning systems and services business, spin off its $2 billion global vehicle control systems business and sell its $2.4 billion bath and kitchen business.
November 2006 – American Standard ranks No. 230 in revenues on the Fortune 500, the magazine’s annual ranking of America’s largest corporations.
February 2006 – Institutional Investor names American Standard one of America’s most shareholder-friendly companies.
February 2006 – American Standard raises its quarterly dividend to 18 cents per share of common stock, which represents an increase of 3 cents per share of common stock, or 20 percent more than the current level.
December 2005 – American Standard achieves full-year revenues of more than $10 billion.
February 2005 – American Standard initiates a quarterly dividend of 15 cents per share of common stock.
December 2004 – American Standard completes its debt reduction plan, reducing its debt to $1.5 billion from a high of $2.6 billion in 1999.
November 2004 – American Standard achieves investment-grade status from Moody’s, after achieving it from S&P in April of the same year.
May 2004 – American Standard completes its previously announced three-for-one stock split. Its stock closes at a price of $111.83 per share on May 27, which on a split-adjusted basis is $37.28.
May 2002 – American Standard announces it will be added to the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index. The company had been part of the S&P MidCap 400 Index.
October 1999 – American Standard’s board of directors announces that the company will pursue the sale of its Medical Systems Group.
1995 – On February 7, American Standard re-emerges as a publicly traded company with an initial stock price of $20 on a split-adjusted basis. Revenues that year for the Bath and Kitchen business (known as Plumbing) are $1.3 billion, for Air Conditioning, $3 billion, and for Vehicle Control Systems (known as Automotive), $1 billion—for a combined total of $5.3 billion.
1990 – American Standard sells the locomotive braking division of WABCO to focus on commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses.
1988 – After a takeover attempt, American Standard’s management team leads a leveraged buyout of the company and takes it private.
1984 – Trane joins the American Standard family of businesses.
1982 – Trane purchases General Electric’s central air conditioning division for $135 million, forming the basis for the business’s residential product line.
1968 – WABCO joins the American Standard family of businesses. That same year, American Standard drops the hyphen from its name.
1948 – By now people informally shorten the name of the company to American-Standard, so the company begins to refer to itself by that name.
1929 – The American Radiator Company merges with The Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company and becomes a publicly traded company. For the next 18 years, it’s known as the American Radiator & Standard Sanitary Corporation.
1914 – A New York Times editorial declares that Westinghouse's railroad air brake has saved more lives than had been lost in all wars up to World War I.
1913 – With his son, Reuben, Trane founds The Trane Company to make heating products for both residential and commercial customers.
1872 – John B. Pierce opens a tinware shop in Ware, Massachusetts. He later founds the Pierce Steam Heating Company, one of three companies that would merge in 1892 to become the American Radiator Company.
1869 – Westinghouse starts the Westinghouse Air Brake Company (shortened to WABCO in later years) to sell his new brake to locomotive companies.
1867 – George Westinghouse invents a new kind of brake that uses compressed air to slow a train.
1864 – James Trane, co-founder of the company that bears his name, settles in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He finds work as a steamfitter and eventually starts his own plumbing business.
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