20th century 1970s: Formation and first orders Canadian company
Bombardier Inc. entered the rail market in 1970 when it purchased
Lohner-Rotax of Austria. While Lohner built trams, Bombardier was more interested in its Rotax business, which built engines for its Ski-Doo snowmobiles. But Bombardier held onto the rolling stock business, and in 1974 secured an order from
Société de transport de Montréal (STM) to build metro trains for the
Montreal Metro. The core of the transportation group was formed when Bombardier purchased the
Montreal Locomotive Works (MLW) in 1975. The purchase of MLW gave Bombardier a rail focused manufacturing facility, that had an established history of building locomotives, freight railcars, and passenger railcars.
1980s: Expansion to the US and Europe With the purchase of the MLW, Bombardier acquired the
LRC (Light, Rapid, Comfortable)
tilting train design which it heavily marketed to both
Amtrak and Canada's
Via Rail, however, the program was only modestly successful with Bombardier selling about 100 LRC coaches to Via. In 1987, Bombardier bought the assets of two major US railcar manufacturers,
Budd and
Pullman-Standard. With these new assets, and no desire to remain in the business of building freight locomotives or freight cars, Bombardier sold off MLW to
General Electric in 1988. In the late 1980s Bombardier Transportation gained a manufacturing presence in Europe with the acquisition of a 45% share in
BN Constructions Ferroviaires et Métalliques ANF Industrie with its main plant in
Crespin in 1989.
1990s: Expansion to Mexico, Germany and the UK Back home in Canada, 1991 brought a big expansion for Bombardier. The company was able to acquire the
Urban Transportation Development Corporation (UTDC) from the Government of Ontario after its parent company
Lavalin went bankrupt. In addition to the core UTDC assets, Bombardier also received the rail manufacturing division of
Hawker Siddeley Canada which had been purchased by Lavalin and merged into UTDC. The Hawker Siddeley assets included a manufacturing plant in
Thunder Bay, Ontario. That same year in Europe, the company established its
Bombardier Eurorail division consisting of ANF, BN, BWS (the former assets of Lohner), and the English bodyshell maker
Prorail, which it had purchased in 1990. The company also owned the North-American rights to the French
TGV through an agreement with
GEC Alsthom. In 1992, the company acquired Mexico's largest railway rolling-stock manufacturer,
Concarril, from the Mexican government. The late 1990s also saw a major expansion in European operations. The company purchased
Waggonfabrik Talbot (whose factory was in
Aachen, Germany) in 1995 and
Deutsche Waggonbau (DW) in 1998, which added factories in
Bautzen and
Görlitz, Germany along with a plant in
Villeneuve, Switzerland which DW had purchased the prior year from
Ateliers de Constructions Mécaniques de Vevey. DaimlerChrysler agreed in August 2000 to sell Adtranz for (equivalent to US$billion in ), a price considered to be low by industry analysts. The sale was cleared by the European Union in April 2001 on the condition that Bombardier would license or sell the Adtranz regional train and tram products to
Stadler Rail in the German market, due to the large market share of Bombardier and Adtranz in the country. The deal would make Stadler a viable independent company providing competition to Bombardier. The takeover came into legal effect on 1 May 2001, with a final price of US$725million. After the purchase, Bombardier Transportation moved its head office to Europe, while keeping a few plants in the US and Canada for the smaller North American market. However, the merger was not smooth. Within weeks Bombardier said that it was misled about the financial situation of Adtranz, and the combination of the two companies took years to resolve. One of the major issues was the sprawling footprint of the two companies in Europe. Even after closing some locations, in the early days after the merger Bombardier planned to operate 27 manufacturing sites across 14 countries. The number of sites meant that some would see the scope of their work decreased. In 2004, amid overcapacity in the European passenger train industry, Bombardier announced eight sites would close. Later that year in September, DaimlerChrysler agreed to refund Bombardier US$209million, making the final sale price for Adtranz just $516million.
2010s: Global operations and decline The transportation division's financial woes continued into the 2010s, reflecting a broader trend within the company. Bombardier's aviation division racked up billions of dollars in debt developing the
CSeries airliner and the
Global 7000 business jet. Between 2012 and 2015, the company announced the closure of several plants including the former Waggonfabrik Talbot plant in Germany, and a factory in Australia, and a facility in Hungary was
nationalized. In the same period, Bombardier agreed to several potentially lucrative, but risky contracts to build
R179 cars for the
New York City Subway, the
Fleet of the Future for San Francisco's
Bay Area Rapid Transit,
Flexity streetcars for
Toronto,
Aventra EMUs for the
London Overground and
Twindexx EMUs for Switzerland's
SBB. Each of these contracts was valued between $600million and $1.8billion, but each called for highly specialized, one-of-kind equipment, and many also included late-delivery penalties. Deliveries of each would be delayed, beset by software issues, and reliability problems once trains were placed in service. Under increasingly dire financial pressure, Bombardier Inc. announced in May 2015 that it planned to split or spin-off Bombardier Transportation as a separate publicly traded company, while retaining control as the majority owner. The sale would generate money needed to continue the financing of the troubled CSeries jet, and Transportation division managers said the independence would allow them to better compete with a growing
Chinese presence in the European market. An
IPO was planned for late 2015. However, before the IPO could be floated, the
Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) stepped in and agreed to give Bombardier a US$1.5billion infusion of cash. In exchange CDPQ, a
crown corporation which manages
pension and insurance plans, would receive a 30% stake in the company. The deal was structured as a
bond/
equity hybrid, with shares returned to CDPQ dependent on the financial performance of the company. Over the next few years, Bombardier worked to correct issues with the cars it agreed to build in the earlier half of the decade, and simplify production through more selective bidding, greater standardization and centralized procurement. It also planned to layoff thousands of workers in Germany. However, the penalties the company was hit with for late deliveries wiped out many of the divisions profits. By 2018, Bombardier slipped to become the 3rd largest rail-equipment manufacturer in the Western World and fourth globally, eclipsed by
CRRC,
Siemens and
Alstom. Between mid-2018 and late-2019, Bombardier started selling off many of its commercial aviation assets, notably selling the CSeries to
Airbus. This left the company as a manufacturer of rail vehicles and business jets.
2021: Sale to Alstom In February 2020,
Alstom agreed to buy the Bombardier Transportation division and signed a
memorandum of understanding to do so, for between €5.8billion and €6.2billion. The deal required approval by Alstom shareholders at a meeting held in October 2020, as well as approval by European regulators. Bombardier's major shareholder,
Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, had already agreed to the sale. In July 2020, the
European Commission approved the sale. Bombardier Inc. announced on 1 December 2020 that the transaction would be closed on 29 January 2021 for €4.4 billion. == Products and services ==