Flextronics
Flex (also known as Flextronics International Ltd. or Flextronics) is an American international supply chain solutions company that offers design, manufacturing, distribution and aftermarket services to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). It is the second largest global electronics manufacturing services (EMS), original design manufacturer (ODM) company by revenue, behind only Taiwan's Foxconn.
Flex has manufacturing operations in over 40 countries, totaling approximately 27.2 million square feet and 200,000 employees.
History
In 1969, the company was founded in Silicon Valley as Flextronics, Inc. by Joe McKenzie. In 1980, the company was sold to Bob Todd, Joe Sullivan and Jack Watts. In 1981, Flextronics became a publicly held company.
In 1990, the company returned to being a private company in a leveraged buyout and was renamed as Flextronics International, Ltd. with Singapore as its new base. In 1993, the company received venture capital funding through Sequoia Capital, and became a public held company again in 1994. The company closed its contract electronic manufacturing plant in Richardson, Texas in 1996. The company acquired two companies in Hong Kong, Astron Group and FICO Plastics Ltd. and a Swedish-based company, Ericsson Business Networks. In 2000, the company ranked third on "100 Best-Managed Companies" by IndustryWeek. In 2005, the company purchased the manufacturing division of Nortel Networks, and Solectron in 2007. In 2006 Flextronics took over a part of the production of Lego, but in 2009 Lego decided to end relations with Flextronics and purchase the production facilities in Mexico and Hungary. On June 4, 2007, Flextronics offered to purchase Solectron for US$3.6 billion and thus making Solectron a subsidiary of Flextronics. The acquisition of Solectron was completed by end of October 2007, earlier than anticipated.