Used to be Andersen Consulting, split off from Arthur Andersen (the latter being one of the Big Five* accounting & consulting firms). Of course, you probably know that much, but I felt compelled to provide details.
Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and Ernst & Young are now the Big Four, after Andersen was-convicted-but-then-found-not-guilty of malpractice and a bunch of other accounting no-nos. Alas, the “not guilty” part (by the SCOTUS) was too late and Andersen was mostly broken up, even though the company still technically exists.
They just run food services for places like colleges or hospitals or the military. If you go to a large hospital and they have a Jazzman’s ‘coffee shop’ and a salad bar and a hamburger station and a Pandinis brand pizza station, all are owned and operated by Sodexo.
Weird timing on this thread. I was at the Dodger game the other night with my fiancee, and they were showing on the big screen the names of people and businesses who had been long-time season ticket holders. Among the businesses who have had season tickets for 45 years or more was the well-known Ingersoll Rand, whose name I’ve been conscious of for as long as I can remember.
At one point in time they made seriously shitty compressors. Really, the one in my shop spent almost as much time down as functioning. I ended up modding the lubrication system on it and it got much more dependable after that.
They had an odd sort of life for a while, there was Ingersoll, and Rand. They started out in 1900ish making drills of all things as Ingersoll, merged with Rand. Somewhere along the way they bought Trane, some lock company [schlage?] Very corporate hot potato. To be honest, I really haven’t followed the company much, I think we sold off the stock we had in the family trust in the late 90s, but I would have to actually check the files.
Trane manufacture large industrial HVAC, and other plant, they also make screw compressors of the kind you might find in cars - its a form of supercharger unit.
They also provide back up maintenance, and since some of their machines run on 3000 volts, they also do the switchgear and protection.
They are also into building environmental controls, energy management.
Their systems are large enough that when big building projects are designed, they have to be included in the original tender process so that the structure can be designed to contain them - trust me, they are pretty big.
Yup, price-fixing on lysine (an animal-feed additive) and citric acid in the 1990s. They were a client of mine a few years ago; they’d really like to get people to think of them for something other than that incident, but as their products and brand name are generally not known to the public, that (if anything) is what sticks in people’s minds.
They made computer floppy disks back in the 1980s, as well (that’s what I first knew them for). Consumer products, like the cassette tapes and disks, have always been a tiny part of their business, but it’s what many consumers recognize when they hear the brand name.
Sorry, just had to say that until I ran across this article today, anyone mentioning Kinder Morgan to me would have been greeted with the response, "Oh, yeah, like, they make the chocolate eggs, right?
The only company hiring in this city is Sutherland Global. DAMNED if I know what they do. It’s so vague. It’s not like “I sell tires” or “I bake bread” or “I work in a Thruway toll booth”.
“I work for Sutherland Global”. Swell, but what do they DO? What do YOU do?
A few months ago my nephew had a just-out-of-college job interview with Johnson Controls and asked me if I’d ever heard of them - all he knew was they were in Wisconsin and he wasn’t sure if they were big enough for him to relocate there.
I had not heard of them, so I looked them up: they make car interiors and car batteries, have 160,000 employees all over the world, and are worth about 30 BILLION dollars<!>
I love how the big accounting firms consolidated, and mashed their names together. At one point they were Arthur Young, Ernst & Whinney, Price Waterhouse, Coopers & Lybrand, Peat Marwick (not sure where the K & G came from).