Landis+Gyr was originally known as Electrotechnisches Institut Theiler and Company, established on September 11, 1905. It was renamed Landis & Gyr, after Heinrich Landis and Karl Heinrich Gyr, who followed founder Richard Theiler as managers. Landis+Gyr designs and manufactures a range of metering products, systems, and services for electricity, heat, and gas for energy utilities around the world. In 1924, Landis+Gyr opened its first overseas offices in New York and Australia. Besides metering products, with the founding of Cerberus Limited in 1940, Landis+Gyr expanded into fire safety products. Cerberus was later acquired by Elektrowatt Limited and is today a part of Siemens Building Technologies. The company was also known for producing optical phone cards until 2006. Landys+Gyr phone cards were used in many countries such as Israel, Belgium, Switzerland and more.
Ownership and acquisitions
1976 – Landis+Gyr acquired Duncan Electric Company of Lafayette, Indiana.
1987 – Landis+Gyr acquired MCC Powers of Chicago. MCC Powers had by then been a long established entity in the US building management market. Spurred by the liberalization and deregulation of global markets, Landis+Gyr re-oriented its business, adding electronic products.
Late 1990s – In the late 1990s, Landis+Gyr went through a series of different investors and owners, amongst them Elektrowatt, KKR and Siemens.
2004 – Landis+Gyr was acquired by then Australia-based Bayard Capital for an undisclosed amount. Bayard Capital had already acquired the British metering company Ampy Automation-Digilog. As Bayard Capital continued to add other acquisitions to the group, 2008 saw the Landis+Gyr name being extended to the whole group in May 2008. An organizational realignment took place under Bayard Capital's ownership. The company moved to a regional structure, assigning regional corporate structures for North America; South America; UK/Pre-Payment; Europe; and Asia Pacific.
2006 – Landis+Gyr acquired Finnish Enermet Group, and also Hunt Technologies and Cellnet Technologies, both of which are from the United States of America.
Various utilities have worked with Landis+Gyr in meeting their consumers' demand for energy management tools by rolling out smart meters. Below are some of the utilities that have worked with Landis+Gyr in deploying smart metering technology to energy consumers.
South America: Copel; AES Eletropaulo; Ampla – Enel/ENDESA Group; Light; CEMIG; National Electricity Administration, Paraguay ; Cooperativa Regional de Electricidad, Bolivia ; EDESUR - Enel/ENDESA Group ; CODENSA – Enel/ENDESA Group.
Criticism
In 2016, Phil Mocek of MuckRock started investigating a project in which Landis+Gyr was involved. After Mocek received the requested information, Landis+Gyr followed up by filing a lawsuit demanding the documentation not be made public.
