ABSTRACT
Tungsram was founded in 1896 as United Incandescent Bulb and Electrical Engineering Co., Ltd. Among the world’s great lighting companies, only General Electric (GE) and Philips are older. In 1987, the government transformed Tungsram into a de facto joint-stock company, with a view toward selling some of Tungsram’s shares to obtain foreign equity participation and thus restructuring help. GE had had its eye on Tungsram throughout the 1980s, during which time they had several mutually advantageous business dealings, including joint patents. Tungsram’s various owners viewed the possibility of a sale to GE favorably. The internal conditions at Tungsram were, in many respects, probably worse than GE had understood or could have gleaned from financial statements. Tungsram has a century-long tradition of Research and development achievements, a tradition that was by and large maintained during the central-planning era. Tungsram was one of the few large Hungarian industrial companies that competed, in a major way, on Western markets during the communist era.
