Portal:Companies

Briarcliff Farms was a farm established in 1890 by Walter William Law in Briarcliff Manor, a village in Westchester County, New York. One of several enterprises established by Law at the turn of the 20th century, the farm was known for its milk, butter, and cream and also produced other dairy products, American Beauty roses, bottled water, and print media. At its height, the farm was one of the largest dairy operations in the Northeastern United States, operating about 8,000 acres (10 sq mi) with over 1,000 Jersey cattle. In 1907, the farm moved to Pine Plains in New York's Dutchess County, and it was purchased by New York banker Oakleigh Thorne in 1918, who developed it into an Aberdeen Angus cattle farm. After Thorne's death in 1948, the farm changed hands several times; in 1968 it became Stockbriar Farm, a beef feeding operation. Stockbriar sold the farmland to its current owners in 1979.

The farm combined a practical American business model with the concept of a European country seat or manor, with cows being milked constantly, and with milk promptly chilled and bottled within five minutes, and shipped to stores in New York City each night. The farm was progressive, with sterile conditions, numerous employee benefits, good living conditions for livestock, and regular veterinary inspections to maintain a healthy herd. The farm also made use of tenant farming, established working blacksmith, wheelwright, and harness shops on-site, was located around Walter Law's manor house, and constructed numerous buildings in the Tudor Revival architectural style. (Full article...)

Aktiengesellschaft (German pronunciation: [ˈaktsi̯ənɡəˌzɛlʃaft] ^ⓘ; abbreviated AG [aːˈgeː] ^ⓘ) is a German word for a corporation limited by share ownership (i.e., one which is owned by its shareholders) whose shares may be traded on a stock market. The term is used in Germany, Austria, Switzerland (where it is equivalent to a société anonyme or a società per azioni) and South Tyrol for companies incorporated there. In the United Kingdom, the equivalent term is public limited company, and in the United States, while the terms "incorporated" or "corporation" are typically used, technically the more precise equivalent term is "joint-stock company". (Full article...)

Microsoft is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. Microsoft would also come to dominate the office suite market with Microsoft Office. The company has diversified in recent years into the video game industry with the Xbox, the Xbox 360, the Xbox One, and the Xbox Series X/S as well as into the consumer electronics and digital services market with Zune, MSN and the Windows Phone OS.

The company's initial public offering was held on March 14, 1986. The stock, which eventually closed at $27.75 a share, peaked at $29.25 a share shortly after the market opened for trading. After the offering, Microsoft had a market capitalization of $519.777 million. Microsoft has subsequently acquired over 225 companies, purchased stakes in 64 companies, and made 25 divestments. Of the companies that Microsoft has acquired, 107 were based in the United States. Microsoft has not released financial details for most of these mergers and acquisitions. (Full article...)

OCR Systems, Inc., was an American computer hardware manufacturer and software publisher dedicated to optical character recognition technologies. The company's first product, the System 1000 in 1970, was used by numerous large corporations for bill processing and mail sorting. Following a series of pitfalls in the 1970s and early 1980s, founder Theodor Herzl Levine put the company in the hands of Gregory Boleslavsky and Vadim Brikman, the company's vice presidents and recent immigrants from the Soviet Ukraine, who were able to turn OCR System's fortunes around and expand its employee base. The company released the software-based OCR application ReadRight for DOS, later ported to Windows, in the late 1980s. Adobe Inc. bought the company in 1992. (Full article...)

• ...that it now requires 250 employees and costs US$9 million to open a new location of the six-year-old America's Incredible Pizza Company?
• ...that Bankrate monitors about 4,800 financial institutions throughout the United States?
• ...that Norwegian businessperson Anthon B. Nilsen, founder of the company of the same name, also wrote popular novels and served one term in the Norwegian Parliament?
• ... that in 1909, the American Brass Company manufactured two-thirds of all the brass in the United States, consumed a third of all copper produced in the U.S., and was the largest fabricator of nonferrous metal in the world?
• ... that Réseau de Transport d'Électricité, Europe's largest transmission system operator, manages a 100,000-kilometre (62,000 mi) network of high-voltage power lines?
• ... that Hitachi Zosen Corporation built the first oil tanker in Japan in 1908 per an order by Standard Oil Company?