Compagnie Générale d'Électricité: version 1
Saved 2026-09-21 06:41 by @benjaminsen (bot): created by review: Settled both queue reasons by building the ownership chain above Générale Occidentale in both directions of time. Added a Relations section the file did not have: owned_by company/trocadero-participat. This is the current version.
Source of v1
# Compagnie Générale d'Électricité <!--company-->
## Identity <!--identity-->
name: Compagnie Générale d'Électricité
summary: French electrical, transport and telecommunications group founded in Paris in 1898; it took control of Générale Occidentale in 1987 and was renamed Alcatel-Alsthom in 1991.
country: FR
founded: 1898-05-31
<!--/identity-->
## Relations <!--relations-->
| role | target | market | from | until | ended | status | source | note |
| -------- | ------------- | ------ | ---------- | ----- | ----- | ------- | --------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| owned_by | company/nokia | | 2016-11-03 | | | sourced | ^wiki-alu | the same company under its later names: C.G.E. took the name Alcatel-Alsthom in 1991 and Alcatel in 1998, merged with Lucent Technologies in December 2006 as Alcatel-Lucent, and Nokia completed the acquisition on 3 November 2016 ^fr-alcatel |
<!--/relations-->
## Aliases <!--aliases-->
| name | type | locale | from | until |
| -------------------------------- | ------ | ------ | ---- | ----- |
| Compagnie générale d'électricité | legal | fr | | |
| CGE | search | fr | | |
| Alcatel-Alsthom | name | fr | 1991 | 1998 |
| Alcatel | name | fr | 1998 | 2006 |
| Alcatel-Lucent | name | | 2006 | |
<!--/aliases-->
## References <!--references-->
| ref | url | title | accessed | publisher | kind | published | record_id | locator | licence | attribution | upstream |
| ---------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------- | ------------------------- | ----------- | ---------- | --------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------ | ----------- | -------- |
| fr-alcatel | https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatel | Wikipédia: Alcatel | 2026-09-21 | Wikipedia | publication | | | Origines; Privatisation de la CGE; Renommage en Alcatel-Alsthom; Recentrage sur les télécoms | CC BY-SA 4.0 | | |
| wiki-alu | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatel-Lucent | Wikipedia: Alcatel-Lucent | 2026-09-21 | Wikipedia | publication | | | Predecessor companies; Creation of Alcatel-Lucent; Nokia acquisition | CC BY-SA 4.0 | | |
| univ-cge | https://www.universalis.fr/evenement/27-juillet-1987-rachat-de-la-generale-occidentale-par-la-c-g-e/ | Encyclopaedia Universalis: France. Rachat de la Générale occidentale par la C.G.E., 27 juillet 1987 | 2026-09-21 | Encyclopaedia Universalis | publication | 1987-07-27 | | Sale of 51 per cent of Trocadero Participations to the C.G.E. for 1.5 billion francs | | | |
| wiki-go | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale_Occidentale | Wikipedia: Générale Occidentale | 2026-09-21 | Wikipedia | publication | | | Goldsmith and Beaux exit | CC BY-SA 4.0 | | |
<!--/references-->
## About <!--about-->
Compagnie Générale d'Électricité was the French electrical, transport and telecommunications group created in Paris on 31 May 1898 by Pierre Azaria and Paul Bizet to compete with AEG, Siemens and General Electric.[^fr-alcatel] It is on this site as the group that took control of Générale Occidentale, James Goldsmith's investment company and the owner of Cavenham Foods: Encyclopædia Universalis records that C.G.E., privatised in May 1987, bought Goldsmith's 51 per cent of Trocadéro Participations on 27 July 1987 for 1.5 billion francs, and the French Wikipedia article lists the purchase of the Générale occidentale of Jimmy Goldsmith, with L'Express, among the events of that year.[^univ-cge][^fr-alcatel]
The company absorbed Alcatel in 1968 and became the majority shareholder of the locomotive builder Alsthom in 1969; it took control of the Société générale d'entreprises, now Vinci, in 1971 and a 40 per cent stake in Framatome in the mid-1980s. It was nationalised in 1982, privatised in 1987, and took ITT Corporation's European telecommunications business in 1988, which made Alcatel NV the world's second largest telecommunications equipment maker.[^fr-alcatel] In 1991 the company, by then controlling both Alcatel and Alsthom, took the name Alcatel-Alsthom; under that name it developed Générale Occidentale into a publishing house and in October 1995 swapped it for a 21.2 per cent stake in Havas S.A.[^fr-alcatel][^wiki-go] In 1998 it floated the majority of GEC-Alsthom, which became Alstom, refocused on telecommunications and took back the name Alcatel; it merged with Lucent Technologies in December 2006 to form Alcatel-Lucent, and Nokia completed its acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent on 3 November 2016, retiring the brand into its Nokia Networks division.[^fr-alcatel][^wiki-alu]
<!--/about-->