Philips

About Philips

Philips, legally Koninklijke Philips N.V., is the Dutch health technology company and former consumer-electronics maker that Gerard Philips and his father Frederik founded in Eindhoven in 1891 to make incandescent light bulbs.^[1] The partnership Philips & Co was converted into the limited company N.V. Philips' Gloeilampenfabrieken on 11 September 1912, and the legal name changed three times more before becoming Koninklijke Philips N.V. in 2013.^[1] It is entered in the Dutch trade register under number 17001910, and its shares trade on Euronext Amsterdam as PHIA and on the New York Stock Exchange as PHG.^[2][1] No company stands above it: its GLEIF record reports neither a direct nor an ultimate parent.^[3] Philips owned the PolyGram record group and sold it to Seagram in 1998.^[4]

The LEI record carries a reporting exception for both the direct and the ultimate accounting consolidating parent, each with the reason code NO_KNOWN_PERSON, in the golden copy published on 21 September 2026.^[3][5] That record gives High Tech Campus 34 in Eindhoven as both the legal and the headquarters address of the entity; Philips itself decided in October 1997 to move its corporate headquarters from Eindhoven to Amsterdam, with the relocation beginning the following year, and the headquarters has remained in Amsterdam since.^[2][1]

Philips' record arm, Philips Phonografische Industrie, was formed in 1950 and merged in 1962 with Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, the owner of Polydor Records, to form the Grammophon-Philips Group, which became PolyGram in 1972.^[6] Siemens and Philips each held half of the venture from 1962; Siemens sold out over the following decades, and Philips held about 75 per cent of PolyGram from 1988 until the sale.^[7] The European Commission's merger decision of 21 September 1998 records PolyGram N.V. as a subsidiary of Philips N.V., the whole of which The Seagram Company Ltd. acquired.^[4] Philips has since left consumer electronics altogether: it sold an 80.1 per cent stake in its semiconductor business on 29 September 2006, separated its lighting business in 2016 (renamed Signify in May 2018) and completed the sale of its domestic appliances business to Hillhouse Investment in September 2021 (renamed Versuni in 2023); the lighting and appliance companies both kept the Philips brand under a licence agreement.^[1]