Atlas Copco

The long-term goal of the Atlas Copco Group is to become the world's leading company within its specialist areas of business. The Group's business concept is to provide a broad range of products and services, which meet the needs of customers in the areas of: air and gas compression, as well as air treatment; industrial manufacturing and the automotive after-market; rock excavation, light construction and demolition; installation, repair and service. Atlas Copco AB is one of the world's leading producers of compressors, mining and construction equipment, power tools, assembly systems, and motion control products. The company is also active in the rental equipment and service sector. Atlas Copco has gone through several transformations since its founding in 1873 as AB Atlas. It was initially a specialized manufacturer of railway equipment but switched at the beginning of the 20th century to diesel engines and pneumatic products. The production of diesel engines was abandoned after World War II, allowing the company to concentrate on the pneumatic equipment sector and erect an extensive international sales network that has made Atlas Copco into one of Sweden's biggest multinational concerns. Closely connected to the Wallenberg banking dynasty, Atlas Copco had to call on its financial support to weather several severe crises during its existence prior to World War II. In the postwar period, the profitability of Atlas Copco has improved greatly, despite a few temporary setbacks. AB Atlas was established in 1873 to supply equipment for the Swedish railways, with two factories located in Stockholm and Södertälje. Atlas was the brainchild of Eduard Fränckel, the chief engineer for Swedish State Railways (SJ), who became the company's first managing director. A second key figure behind Atlas was D.O. Francke, a Gothenburg industrialist and financier who headed the banking enterprise Göteborgs Handelskompani. The biggest shareholder in Atlas was André Oscar Wallenberg, the founder of Sweden's first commercial bank, Stockholms Enskilda Bank. Wallenberg had involved the bank in financing a number of railway construction projects and his interest in Atlas was a natural extension of this activity. Atlas's losses mounted during the 1880s as economic growth remained weak. Göteborgs Handelskompani, which was suffering financial reverses, gradually reduced its stake in Atlas, while Stockholms Enskilda Bank kept the company afloat through loans and consequently increased its control. A solution to Atlas's financial problems was difficult since the company was saddled with large and costly production facilities and faced fierce competition in the market for railway equipment and other heavy industrial goods at a time of economic slowdown. The company's situation revealed that "the initial investment in Atlas had not only been made at the wrong time but also in the wrong industry," corporate historian Professor Torsten Gårdlund concluded. Burdened with excess production capacity, Atlas had to find other business besides making railway carriages. It produced steel and wrought-iron parts for bridges and other structures and made an unsuccessful diversification into marine steam engines and boilers by buying a shipyard in Gävle in a drastic attempt to develop more profitable product lines. When these efforts produced poor results, the Södertälje and Gävle facilities were closed and activity was concentrated in Stockholm. In 1887 the Wallenbergs ousted company president Fränckel, who had been criticized for lax management, and replaced him with Oscar Lamm, a mining engineer. With Atlas continuing to suffer losses and Stockholms Enskilda Bank having a significant part of its assets tied up in the company, Knut Wallenberg, who had become head of the bank on his father's death in 1886, decided at the end of 1890 to allow Atlas to be liquidated. The shareholders lost their investment, and the bank suffered heavy losses as its creditor. A new company