Schneider Electric SE is a French
multinational company that specializes in digital automation and energy management. It addresses homes, buildings, data centers, infrastructure and industries, by combining energy technologies, real-time automation, software, and services.
Schneider Electric is a
Fortune Global 500 company, publicly traded on the Euronext Exchange, and is a component of the
Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index
In finance, a stock index, or stock market index, is an index that measures a stock market, or a subset of the stock market, that helps investors compare current stock price levels with past prices to calculate market performance.
Two of the ...
. In FY2020, the company posted revenues of €25.2 billion.
Schneider Electric is the
parent company
A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...
of
Square D,
APC, and others. It is also a research company.
Head office
Schneider Electric has had its head office in
Rueil-Malmaison, France since 2000. This headquarters previously housed Schneider subsidiary Télémécanique
while the parent company occupied a site in
Boulogne-Billancourt
Boulogne-Billancourt (; often colloquially called simply Boulogne, until 1924 Boulogne-sur-Seine, ) is a wealthy and prestigious Communes of France, commune in the Parisian area, located from its Kilometre zero, centre. It is a Subprefectures in ...
.
The company uses an international operations model
wherein its key personnel and large numbers of its staff are spread across main offices in Reuil-Malmaison,
,
,
and
Boston.
History
1836-1963
In 1836, brothers
Adolphe and
Joseph-Eugene Schneider took over an abandoned foundry in
Le Creusot, France
Le Creusot () is a commune and industrial town in the Saône-et-Loire department, region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, eastern France.
The inhabitants are known as Creusotins. Formerly a mining town, its economy is now dominated by metallurgica ...
. Two years later, they created Schneider & Cie, focusing primarily on the steel industry. Schneider & Cie rapidly grew, specializing in the production of heavy machinery and transportation equipment. In 1871, following France's defeat in the
Franco-Prussian War, it developed a main activity of manufacturing weapons with the encouragement of the government in Paris. It eventually became a complex group with industrial activities in many sites in France and abroad, including in Russia before 1917 and in Czechoslovakia between 1919 and 1938.
[
]
1963-1999
In the 1960s, Schneider was absorbed by Belgium's Empain group, which, in 1969, merged it with its own corporate structures to form Empain-Schneider Empain-Schneider was a Franco-Belgian industrial group formed in the 1960s from the merger of Belgium's Empain group and France's Schneider & Cie. In 1980 it was renamed Schneider SA. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the group was comprehensively res ...
. In 1980–1981, the Empain family sold its controlling stake to Paribas, which was in turn nationalized in 1982. In the 1980s and 1990s, the company, by then again named Schneider, divested from steel and shipbuilding and focused mainly on electricity through strategic acquisitions. These included Télémécanique in 1988, Square D in 1991, and in 1992.
Timeline since 1999
1999: Schneider Group acquired Lexel. In May 1999, the Schneider Group was renamed Schneider Electric.
The company became an ITER
ITER (initially the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ''iter'' meaning "the way" or "the path" in Latin) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject aimed at creating energy by replicating, on Earth ...
supplier.
2014: Schneider Electric advertised a cooperation with German power supplier RWE.
2016: Schneider acquired the British retail brand Tower Electric.
2017: Schneider Electric took control of AVEVA Group PLC, a provider of engineering and industrial software based in the UK.
2018: Schneider Electric acquired Larsen & Toubro's Electrical & Automation (E&A) business in a cash deal for (excluding the marine business and Servowatch Ltd. then, currently a part of L&T E&A business).
2019: Schneider launched Schneider Electric Exchange.
2020: In February 2020, Schneider made a €1.4 billion takeover bid for German company RIB Software
RIB Software SE is a Germany-based multinational company providing construction and building information modelling (BIM) software to customers in the architecture, engineering, and real estate industries. In 2020, it became a subsidiary of Frenc ...
, closing the deal in July 2020.
Aveva acquisition
Schneider made its first attempt to combine with Aveva in 2015.
Acquisitions and divestments
Organizational structure and offer
Since 2019, Schneider Electric has been operating business units: Energy Management, Industrial Automation, and Services.
Energy Management
The Energy Management business provides products for the management of energy in medium voltage and grid automation, low voltage and building automation, secure power and cooling applications.
Services
The Services business includes three divisions: Global Field Services, Energy and Sustainability
Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livi ...
Services, and Smart grid
A smart grid is an electrical grid which includes a variety of operation and energy measures including:
*Advanced metering infrastructure (of which smart meters are a generic name for any utility side device even if it is more capable e.g. a f ...
Services.
EcoStruxure
In 2016 Schneider Electric launched the next generation of EcoStruxure – an IoT
The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other com ...
-enabled architecture. The EcoStruxure platform uses Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure, often referred to as Azure ( , ), is a cloud computing platform operated by Microsoft for application management via around the world-distributed data centers. Microsoft Azure has multiple capabilities such as software as a ...
.
In April 2019, the company launched Schneider Electric Exchange, an open business platform.
Research and development investment
In its Innovation Summit North America, Schneider Electric expressed its aim to assess emerging technologies, support and subsidize startups through guiding them. In FY2021, Schneider Electric announced that its research and development expenses were around 855 million euros.
See also
* Creusot steam hammer
References
External links
*
Schneider Electric global blog
{{Authority control
CAC 40
Companies based in Île-de-France
Companies in the Euro Stoxx 50
Companies listed on Euronext Paris
Conglomerate companies of France
Electric transformer manufacturers
Electrical engineering companies of France
Electrical wiring and construction supplies manufacturers
Electronics companies of France
French brands
Locomotive manufacturers of France
Manufacturers of industrial automation
MES software
Multinational companies headquartered in France
French companies established in 1836
Manufacturing companies established in 1836