Linos (company)
| Linos AG
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|---|---|
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| legal form | AG |
| founding | 1898 |
| resolution | 2010 |
| Seat | Goettingen , Germany |
| management | Volker Brockmeyer |
| Number of employees | 818 ( 2008 ) |
| sales | 91.1 million EUR ( 2008 ) |
| Branch | optics |
| Website | www.linos.de |
The Linos was a German listed company, the optical systems and components for optical devices produced and sold. Linos has been part of the French Qioptiq group since 2006 and merged with it in 2010; Qioptiq, in turn, has been part of the US group Excelitas Technologies since 2013. The brand name Linos will be continued.
Product areas
Linos developed and supplied devices and components for applications in areas such as lasers , measurement technology , medicine , biotechnology and semiconductors . Examples of this were head-up displays , 3D measuring dental cameras, optical systems for eye surgery, camera solutions for X-ray image intensifiers and lenses for cell phones .
In the area of classic, passive precision optics, Linos offered standard components such as lenses , mirrors , prisms and polarizers with a wide range of variants. Linos was one of the few manufacturers of Faraday isolators and Pockels cells . Another large product area were mechanical components for holding and positioning optical elements. This ranged from simple lens mounts to rail systems and mirror holders to optical tables.
Locations
Development and production took place in Göttingen, Feldkirchen near Munich and Regen . The former sales company in the USA merged on January 1, 2009 with the US subsidiary of the Qioptiq Group to form Qioptiq Linos Inc.
Company history
The origins of the Linos go back to 1898. That year the company Spindler & Hoyer was founded in Göttingen . In 1983 Gerd Litfin began his work in the management of Spindler & Hoyer GmbH.
In February 1996, Litfin acquired the company Spindler & Hoyer through a management buyout and renamed it Linos. In the following years, manufacturers of precision optics components were acquired in a targeted manner: including Steeg & Reuter Precision Optics and Franke Optik Vertriebsgesellschaft in Gießen , Gsänger Optoelektronik GmbH in Planegg and Rodenstock Precision Optics in Munich.
Linos AG went public in September 2000 . The initial listing of the Linos share was 73 euros, a few days later it reached a high of 115.10 euros. One year later, in September 2001, Linos took over the manufacturer of high-quality mirror holders from Lees Optical Instruments Co. Inc., Boulder, Colorado / USA . In September 2003 Linos reported a loss of EUR 8.7 million ( EBIT ) for the first three quarters of 2003 . The price of the share fell to EUR 2.30.
Following the sale of the Giessen plant to Jenoptik in April 2004 and extensive rationalization measures, a profit of 9.7 million euros was generated for 2004. During the same period, the share price gradually rose again to around 10 euros. Starting in 2005, a production center was built in Regen with an investment volume of around 5.3 million euros and was put into operation in the summer of 2006.
In October 2006 the Qioptiq Group from France took over Linos by purchasing more than 75 percent of the shares. On December 20, 2006, Linos concluded a domination and profit transfer agreement with Opt-co Akquisitions (today's Qioptiq Holding Deutschland GmbH). The general meeting of Linos on February 6, 2007 approved this contract. At the annual general meeting on August 25, 2008, a squeeze-out was resolved, at which point Qioptiq already held more than 95 percent of the Linos shares. Linos has not been listed on the Frankfurt securities exchange since August 2009. On November 24, 2010, Qioptiq Beteiligungs GmbH was merged with the company (entry in the commercial register on December 21, 2010). At the same time, the name was changed from Linos to Qioptiq.
The former Linos companies belong to the Photonic Systems Division (PSD) of Qioptiq - one of three areas of the group. At the end of 2009, 869 people were employed at the Göttingen, Feldkirchen (Munich), Regen, Asslar, Hamble (UK) and Rochester (NY, USA) locations. In 2009, the Photonic Systems Division achieved sales of around 40 percent of total Qioptiq sales.
Web links
- former company website (www.linos.de) no longer exists
Individual evidence
- ↑ Linos catalog 2006/2007
- ↑ US subsidiary of LINOS Photonics merged into Qioptiq LINOS, Inc., Handelsblatt, February 24, 2009 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Linos share is fighting for the next price level . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , October 15, 2004
- ↑ Qioptiq Group Takeover of Linos AG Successful ( Memento of the original dated November 14, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ de.biz.yahoo.com ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Linos becomes Qioptiq ( Memento of the original from June 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
