Now you lighting nuts in Europe would be celebrating for a return of one of EU's long running brands, yet still hold a sore grudge over how GE ruined Thorn in the UK. See:

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20180215/news/152106/general-electric-strikes-deal-sell-portion-ge-lighting

Well, at least this is a better option than closing it. Don't know what to think about bringing back Tungsram. It's kind of nice but then again it's not the same thing. Time will tell what it becomes.

Is this true that until GE bought Tungsram, GE hadn't any activity outside NA? And that GE lighting Europe, is what was once Tungsram? If so, Tunsgrams officially returns to be an independent lighting manufacturer. It is unusual to see such a thing in the modern lighting industry, where exit plannings and companies that buying others, occurs non-stop.

I think this is excellent news for those involved!  Unusually, it was not taken over by another company but a private investor, Jorg Bauer (a former president of GE Hungary).  The value of the deal will be kept secret, and it should be completed by this summer.

It will be a great opportunity for the employees to now be able to run the business the way they want to.  And in terms of motivation to succeed, it doesn’t get much better than having a CEO who actually owns the company.

Dor, you are partly right about GE not having any real business outside NA until it took over Tungsram and Thorn in 1990, but it was not always that way.  Going back to the early days of the lighting industry, GE devised a very clever strategy to dominate the global electrical industry.  Firstly it took over control of most of the US industry via secret shareholdings in its competitors.  Then it established IGE, the International Geneneral Electric Company to duplicate this situation over the entire world - and in the few cases where it could not acquire major shareholdings in its competitors then it succeeded in thoroughly dominating them via its patents.  So Tungsram was in fact a 100% subsidiary of GE at that time.  So was Thorn’s predecessor BTH Mazda.  Philips and Osram were also dominated by GE’s shareholding, as well as pretty much every other global lampmaker of significance - including the smaller old Chinese, Japanese, Asian, Latam and European companies.

After WW2 this situation began to change gradually due to political influence, and following a series of antitrust lawsuits, GE was forced to sell off its shareholdings in nearly all of its international businesses because they were deemed illegal.  So after the 60s GE was basically a pure North American company - sometimes with agencies selling overseas via the remnants of IGE, but never very effectively because GE was forced to divest its foreign factories and it was not cost effective to export American lamps around the globe.  The lamp industry was only re-globalised when Philips was permitted to purchase Westinghouse in the 1980s.  GE thereafter looked for opportunities to expand its business overseas, and that chance came with the sale of Tungsram and Thorn -so effectively regaining control of companies it had lost half a century earlier.

Where does this former GE europe/Middle east have factories that are still operational?