How it started
Predecessor companies and formation
Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget (ASEA, English translation: General Swedish Electrical Company Limited) was founded in 1883 in Västerås, Sweden by Ludvig Fredholm as manufacturer of electrical light and generators.
Brown, Boveri & Cie (BBC) was formed in 1891 in Baden near Zurich, Switzerland by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri as a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies producing AC and DC motors, generators, steam turbines and transformers.
On 10 August 1987, ASEA and BBC announced they would merge to form ASEA Brown Boveri (ABB). The new corporation would remain headquartered in both Zurich, Switzerland and Västerås, Sweden, with each parent company holding 50 percent. The merger created a global industrial group with revenue of approximately $15 billion and 160,000 employees. The merger also included the Finnish company Strömberg that had been purchased by ASEA the same year.
When ABB began operations on 5 January 1988, its core businesses included power generation, transmission and distribution; electric transportation; and industrial automation and robotics.
In its first year, ABB undertook some 15 acquisitions, including the environmental control group Fläkt AB of Sweden, the contracting group Sadelmi/Cogepi of Italy, and the railway manufacturer Scandia-Randers A/S of Denmark. In 1989, ABB purchased an additional 40 companies, including Westinghouse Electric's transmission and distribution assets, and announced an agreement to purchase the Stamford, Connecticut-based Combustion Engineering (C-E).
From Wikipedia’s article on ABB Group, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2