Company type | Public |
---|---|
Industry | Automotive parts, machine tools, construction materials |
Predecessors | Houdaille-Hershey Corporation Houde Engineering Corporation |
Founded | January 19, 1919Buffalo, New York, U.S. | in
Defunct | September 1987 |
Successor | TI Group IDEX Corporation |
Key people | A.B. Shultz Claire L. Barnes Ralph Peo Gerald C. Saltarelli Donald N. Boyce |
Number of employees | 9,000 (1977) |
Houdaille Industries was a diversified manufacturing company which produced automotive products, industrial products, machine tools, construction materials and contracting. The company had its beginnings in Buffalo, New York, in 1919, where the Houde Engineering Corporation manufactured shock absorbers that had been invented and patented in France by Maurice Houdaille (1880-1953).[1] The company continued to grow with the automobile industry, and through diversification, until 1987 when it was forced to liquidate most of its assets to satisfy obligations to investors from a 1979 leveraged buy out.[2]