Originally Posted By: 440Magnum
The way I read it, the FORMER sister company of Champion Laboratories is UCI, and now primarily builds components like water pumps.
I think "Champion Laboratories" is what we know of as a filter manufacturer and is now a component of Fram Filtration.
I could be wrong, but I think the relationship between UCI and Champ Labs ended when the latter got involved with Fram.
Further reading makes it really murky about who owns whom. "UCI" is listed as a "sister corporation" of Champion Laboratories.
Champion Laboratories appears on the "Fram Filtration" corporate website as a component company- no mention of UCI there at all, UNTIL you drill down into the Champ Labs link where you find it mentioned as a sister company.
But dang, if you follow THAT link and go to "UCI-Fram autobrands," it appears that (at least in New Zealand) Fram is a component of UCI.
This is why I'm in engineering, not in the corporate (filled with [censored] like shuffling names around) world.
Originally it was UIS (United Industrial Syndicate) a private holding company that bought poorly performing companies and turned them around....and it worked, they let each company operate their own affairs......then the Owner died. Children did not want to continue the company, so they sold off the companies to the UCI ...
Quote:
On June 20, 2003, we purchased the vehicle parts businesses of UIS, consisting of all of the issued and
outstanding common stock or other equity interests of Champion Laboratories, Inc., Wells Manufacturing
Corporation, Neapco Inc., Pioneer, Inc., Wells Manufacturing Canada Limited, UIS Industries Ltd. (which
is the owner of 100% of the capital stock of Flexible Lamps, Ltd. and Airtex Products Ltd.), Airtex Products
S.A., Airtex Products, Inc., (currently Airtex Mfg., Inc.), Talleres Mecanicos Montserrat S.A. de C.V.,
Brummer Seal de Mexico, S.A. de C.V., Brummer Mexicana en Puebla, S. A. de C.V., Automotive
Accessory Co. Ltd and Airtex Products, LLC, predecessors to the entities that now own the assets of the
Airtex business. We refer to this transaction as the ""Acquisition.''
The purchase price paid was $808 million, plus transaction fees. The Acquisition was Ñnanced through a
combination of debt and $260 million in cash contributed to us as equity by our parent, UCI Acquisition
Holdings, Inc. through contributions from Carlyle Partners III, L.P. and CP III Coinvestment, L.P. We are a
wholly owned subsidiary of UCI Acquisition Holdings, Inc. We and UCI Acquisition Holdings, Inc. are
corporations formed at the direction of The Carlyle Group, which we refer to as Carlyle.
So once UIS founder died, the children sold out the business to UCI, the "Carlyle Group" George W. Bush had some interest in this "Iron Triangle" Group. (EVIL)
So Rank acquired UCI for $980 million from private equity firm Carlyle Group in 2011.
This is what happened, UIS let each company run it's business and basically guided the companies to profitable ventures. Once Carlyle took over, things were controlled by "upper management" and lines would move around, for tax breaks, etc.
Once Rank got a hold of it, they moved corporate to some posh Chicago suburb, so now there is no Corporate exposure to the manufacturing plants....and then Engineering was clueless....
So "upper management" would never visit the manufacturing floor, only once a year, the engineers had no clue about the business they were in!
Companies like Airtex was constantly cutting open competition fuel pumps to "figure out how they worked"
There was HUGE disconnect with the "corporate types" and the men and women on the shop floor!
RANK RAN THE BUSINESS INTO THE GROUND, Carlyle at least consolodated, for example moved Airtex water pumps to ASC... Rank finally moved Airtex to Mexico and China. Justifying Donald J. Trumps rhetoric.
Champion Labs has been profitable, and they did need to close the West Salem plant, and consolidate to Albion IL.