A new Canadian defence company has formed under the banner of a very old name.
Former CEO of National Bank Louis Vachon and a group of investors announced yesterday the creation of Marconi Technologies, a newly Canadian-owned defence company headquartered in Montréal. The company plans to sell hardware and communications technology to the Canadian government and allied countries.
“This is how Canada takes its rightful place as a leader in sovereign defence technology.”
Louis Vachon,
Marconi Technologies
Named after Italian-born inventor Guglielmo Marconi, who is widely credited as one of the inventors of radio, Marconi Technologies formed from a carve-out of a UK- and US-owned company that was brought under Canadian ownership.To create Marconi, the investors bought the tactical communications division of Ultra I&C from UK defence company Cobham Ultra. The company already operates in the US and the UK, and will now call Montréal its headquarters.
“This is how Canada takes its rightful place as a leader in sovereign defence technology,” Vachon said in a statement.
In 1903, Guglielmo Marconi founded the Canadian Marconi Company—eventually rebranded, losing the Marconi name, as CMC Electronics—which made breakthroughs in radiocommunications, including building the stations that would receive the first wireless transatlantic radio signal and creating the radio network that would later become the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Marconi also founded the UK-based Marconi Company—its US subsidiary, the Marconi Corporation, was at one time the main provider of radio communications in the US. After being bought and sold multiple times over the years, by 2005 the Marconi Company had become a British-headquartered telecommunications firm. That year, Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson acquired its assets and effectively retired the name.
Now, Marconi Technologies has been resurrected as a majority Canadian-owned, dual-use communications technology company, chaired by Vachon, with Alain Cohen as CEO. With roughly 300 employees, Marconi Technologies makes communications equipment for military and civilian uses, including tactical radios and satellite communication terminals.
RELATED: Paving the way for a Canadian defence-tech boom
Marconi is hitting the market as Canadian companies jockey for a flood of new federal defence funding. Domestic upstarts Ottawa-based Dominion Dynamics, and former defence minister Harjit Sajjan’s company Juno Industries, have both raised venture funding to make a play to become defence primes or neoprimes, meaning that they sell a variety of military hardware and software to the government.
In addition to billions more in military spending, the federal government established a new framework for defence procurement through the Defence Industrial Strategy this year, as it looks to reduce reliance on the US. Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government aims to award more than 70 percent of military supply contracts to Canadian firms, a big step up from the status quo of 43 percent.
Feature image courtesy Marconi Technologies.