Saint-Gobain

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Saint-Gobain (Euronext: [SGO]) is a multinational corporation, founded and headquartered in France. Originally a glassmaking company, it now also manufactures a variety of structural and high-performance materials.

The Compagnie de Saint-Gobain was founded in 1665 when Louis XIV of France wanted to encourage French manufactures at the same time that he was enlarging his father's hunting lodge at Versailles in woodland west of Paris. Louis's Minister of Economy, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, was appointed to construct the facility and develop various new technologies, which were magnificently on display at the château de Versailles, notably in the Salon des Glaces, the "Hall of Mirrors" where the arch-headed windows overlooking the parterre were echoed in the framed panels of Saint-Gobain mirror-glass that reflected light through the gallery.

At the time, the French did not possess glassmaking capabilities; rather Venice was known as the world leader for glass manufacturing. Colbert then commissioned the Venetians to build the mirrors that were known as the "Hall of Mirrors". This was the beginning of the Compagnie de Saint-Gobain, which, after a bankruptcy in 1702 owing to mismanagement, had its royal patents for monopoly in the manufacture of French mirror-glass renewed right down to the Revolution, in spite of fierce, sometimes violent, protests from the partisans of free enterprise. The Parisian tax farmers who had bailed out the royal manufactory found it a safe place to invest capital, and were rewarded after ca. 1725, as the inherited shares passed into the great noble families into which the daughters of the original fermiers-generals had married. One wife of a shareholder was Mme Geoffrin, remembered for the Parisian salon that gathered round her: her daughter married the marquis de La Ferté-ImbaultFernand Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce 1982, vol. II of Civilization and Capitalism p341f .

Today, Saint-Gobain is a world leader in Engineered Materials. Through three business sectors; Glass, Construction Products and High-Performance Materials, Saint-Gobain operates throughout the world with sales of more than $40 billion. In December 2005 it purchased the British company BPB plc, the world's largest manufacturer of plasterboard, for $US6.7 billion. [link]

External links

• [Saint-Gobain group website]

References