The ADT Corporation provides residential and small business electronic security, fire protection and other related alarm monitoring services in 35 countries. The corporate head office is located in Boca Raton, Florida.
There were many small telegraph delivery companies in the United States in the 19th century. In 1874, 57 district telegraph delivery companies affiliated and became "American District Telegraph". With the increase in telephone usage in the late 19th century, ADT's messenger business slowly declined in popularity. ADT tried branching out and developing their signaling business while still maintaining their telegraph business as primary income source. ADT incorporated into Western Union in 1901 and separated its messenger business from its main signaling business at that time. In 1909, Western Union and ADT came under the control of AT&T. ADT began to expand into new areas such as fire alarms and burglar alarms between 1910 and 1930, but was kept separate from AT&T's Holmes alarm business. ADT became a publicly owned company in the 1960s.
In 1964, ADT was found to be a monopoly in restraint of trade. It was shown to provide almost 80% of the central station alarm service in the United States. In some cities, such as New York City and Memphis, Tennessee, they were the sole provider. They were also found to have forced competitors out of business by lowering prices below cost. They would charge national accounts very low prices in cities with competitors and much higher prices where no competition was available. ADT was forced to adopt a national price list, which could not be varied, to help establish Central Station Competitors in cities without competition, and to pay fines and triple damages to the federal government, customers, and local competitors.[citation needed]
In the early part of 1987, Hawley Goodall, owned by Lord Ashcroft bought the Indianapolis-based Crime Control Inc., the fourth-largest company in the U.S. security market, for $50 million. Later in the year, it bought ADT and moved to Bermuda. This purchase transformed Hawley into the leading security services business in the United States, and resulted in the majority of its revenues coming from the North American market. As a result of the acquisition, Hawley changed its name to ADT Limited and decided to refocus its business around security services. At the end of 1987, the company sold its North American-based facility services business to Denmark's ISS A/S.
In 1997, ADT was purchased by Tyco by means of a reverse takeover. In May 2010, ADT acquired competitor Broadview Security for $2.0 billion and transitioned services to ADT. On September 19, 2011, Tyco announced that it would split into three companies, ADT being one of the three.On October 1, 2012, ADT debuted as an independent public company and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: ADT).
Source: Wikipedia
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