Who owns baldor

Louis offices were closed. Throughout this period of slow growth, Baldor continued to produce a relatively small range of motors. The company's stock-in-trade, an enclosed, durable, low horsepower motor, sold well in the agricultural industry where it was used for crop driers and aerators but was not versatile enough to accommodate a wide range of other uses.

Content with the steady profitability of his firm, Edwin Ballman refused to implement the kind of design innovations necessary to attract a wider clientele. This conservative approach served the company well during the economically buoyant s, but in a price war between industry giants Gould, Westinghouse and Emerson found Baldor stuck in the middle with little leeway to offer competitive pricing.

The loss jolted Baldor into making some profound changes in its operating philosophy. At the age of 78, Edwin Ballman stepped down as CEO of the firm to allow his son Fred to take full control of the company's management.

Fred Ballman felt that Baldor's best approach for competing against the larger manufacturers was to convert the company into a service-oriented firm that could provide customers with quality, custom-designed motors where and when they needed them.

Ballman quickly recruited Rollie Boreham, a Baldor salesman with a degree in engineering who had been complaining for some time that the company wasn't offering the variety of designs that his customers wanted. The two collaborated on a new business plan for Baldor that emphasized the necessity of catering directly to customer needs. Within a few years Baldor was producing one of the widest ranges of motors in the industry.

Companies could go to Baldor for explosion proof motors, lint-proof motors, motors that would work dirty, motors that could be washed and motors that could be mounted in just about any direction. By almost two-thirds of Baldor's products were custom designed for specific applications. The younger Ballman's reorganization of Baldor was a resounding success. New sales offices, run by independent district managers working on a commission basis, were opened across the country, and new manufacturing facilities were built in St.

Louis, as well as Columbus, Mississippi, and Westville, Oklahoma. In order to ensure the ready availability of their products to industries that often required quick delivery to keep a factory running, Baldor also opened 23 well-stocked warehouses across the country. This system of warehouses would be maintained and expanded into the s when just-in-time manufacturing made warehousing unfashionable in most industries.

Baldor management felt that the advantages of their warehouse system in terms of product availability and customer service outweighed the cost and risks involved. The energy crisis of the s proved a boon for Baldor as the company's high quality, energy efficient motors suddenly became more cost efficient than the cheaper models put out by some large competitors.

In Baldor became the first motor manufacturer to place efficiency ratings on the nameplates of all their products. A crucial component of Ballman and Boreham's plan for growth was the insistence on research and development to bring Baldor's products and manufacturing operations to the cutting edge of technology.

In order to finance new product development and plant modernization, company president Boreham took out Baldor's first long-term loan in and then brought the company public in With this new influx of capital, Baldor embarked on a modest program of acquisitions with the aim of vertically integrating the company's manufacturing and reducing reliance on outside suppliers. During the s and early s, Baldor purchased Southwestern Die Casting to supply the company's aluminum casting needs, Carolina Capacitors, a maker of motor starting capacitors, Boehm Manufacturing, a manufacturer of gears, and Nupar Manufacturing, a metal stamping company providing a wide range of Baldor's motor parts.

The early s were a difficult time for the American economy in general and for the motor industry in particular. Foreign imports of industrial machinery began arriving in the United States in quantity in the s as a strong dollar made offshore manufacturing relatively inexpensive.

As the motors in these products wore out in the early s, U. Foreign competition and a crippling slump in the agricultural industry, an important market for Baldor, took their toll. In , Baldor experienced the first sales decrease since Fred Ballman's reorganization of the company and earnings were cut by a third. The US market for high-efficiency motors is expected to grow 10 to15 percent in on the back of new regulations, effective in December this year.

Similar regulations in Canada, Mexico and in the European Union are expected in We estimate two-thirds of these synergies will be realized by Under the terms of the merger agreement, the transaction is structured as a cash tender offer to be followed as soon as possible by a merger. The tender offer is expected to commence in December and is subject to customary terms and conditions, including the tender of at least two-thirds of Baldor's shares on a fully diluted basis, and regulatory clearance.

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