STMicroelectronics

STMicroelectronics N.V. commonly referred to as ST or STMicro is a Dutch multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland and listed on the French stock market. ST is the largest European semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. The company resulted from the merger of two government-owned semiconductor companies in 1987: Thomson Semiconducteurs of France and SGS Microelettronica of Italy. ST was formed in 1987 by the merger of two government-owned semiconductor companies: Italian SGS Microelettronica (where SGS stands for Società Generale Semiconduttori, "Semiconductors' General Company"), and French Thomson Semiconducteurs, the semiconductor arm of Thomson. SGS Microelettronica originated in 1972 from a previous merger of two companies: ATES (Aquila Tubi e Semiconduttori), a vacuum tube and semiconductor maker headquartered in L'Aquila, the regional capital of the region of Abruzzo in Southern Italy, which in 1961 changed its name to Azienda Tecnica ed Elettronica del Sud and relocated its manufacturing plant in the Industrial Zone of Catania, in Sicily; Società Generale Semiconduttori (founded in 1957 by Jewish-Italian engineer, politician, and industrialist Adriano Olivetti). Thomson Semiconducteurs was created in 1982 by the French government's widespread nationalization of industries following the election of socialist François Mitterrand to the presidency. It included: the semiconductor activities of the French electronics company Thomson; in 1985 it bought Mostek, a US company founded in 1969 as a spin-off of Texas Instruments, from United Technologies; Silec, founded in 1977; Eurotechnique, founded in 1979 in Rousset, Bouches-du-Rhône as a joint-venture between Saint-Gobain of France and US-based National Semiconductor; EFCIS, founded in 1977; SESCOSEM, founded in 1969. At the time of the merger of these two companies in 1987, the new corporation was named SGS-THOMSON but took its current name of STMicroelectronics in May 1998 following Thomson's sale of its shares.