Going to a pure holding company — and reintegrating nine years later (2012)

What to make of the nine years apart

Being able to supply everything in-house from high-voltage to low-voltage switchboards — the way the company answers the question in 2025 reflects well why it folded the structure after nine years. What remained once substation equipment had gone to Japan AE Power Systems and switchgear and control components had passed to Schneider Electric was a combination in which the boards, the transformers and the uninterruptible power supplies were all its own. Selling that as a single package is hard to arrange while the legal entities remain split four ways. The dissolution of the holding company can be seen as the result of re-choosing how the retained businesses would be sold.

It cannot be said that the nine years apart were wasted. Both the conversion of the water-environment business into Metawater and the transfer of switchgear and control components to Schneider had an aspect in which partnering was possible precisely because those businesses had been carved out as separate companies. In fact the two that went outside were never subjects of the reintegration; what was brought back in 2012 was only the side being kept. Separation was used as a tool of sorting, and once the sorting was done the company switched to running as one — that reading holds.