ABB Ltd. is a Swedish–Swiss multinational corporation headquartered in Västerås, Sweden, and Zürich, Switzerland. It is traded on the SIX Swiss Exchange in Zürich, the Nasdaq Nordic exchange in Sweden and the OTC Markets Group's pink sheets in the United States. It was ranked 340th in the Fortune Global 500 list of 2020 and has been a global Fortune 500 company for 24 years.
ABB was formed in 1988 when Sweden's Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget (ASEA) and Switzerland's Brown, Boveri & Cie merged to create Asea Brown Boveri, later simplified to the initials ABB. Both companies were established in the late 1800s and grew into major electrical equipment manufacturers, a business in which ABB remains active. Its traditional core activities include power generation, transmission and distribution; industrial automation, and robotics. Between 1989 and 1999, the company was also active in the rolling stock manufacturing sector. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, ABB acquired hundreds of other companies, often in central and eastern Europe, as well as in Asia and North America.
On occasion, the company's operations have encountered controversy. During 2001, an ABB entity pled guilty for bid rigging; the firm has also had three US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act bribing resolutions against it; in 2004, 2010, and 2022. In early 2002, ABB announced its first-ever annual loss, which was attributed to asbestos-related litigation. Within three years, the company had successfully restructured its operations. During the 2010s, ABB has largely focused its growth strategy on the robotics and industrial automation sectors. Prior to the sale of its Power Grids division to Hitachi in 2020, ABB was Switzerland's largest industrial employer.
Work in progress...