Albert Thornbrough
 Albert Thornbrough  (businessman) | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Albert Adam Thornbrough September 1912 |
| Died | 8 September 2004 (Age 92) |
Cause of death | stroke |
| Nationality | US |
| Alma mater | Kansas State University |
| Spouse | Virginia Thornbrough |
US businessman who pioneered multinational production chains who attended the 1968 Bilderberg. | |
Albert Adam Thornbrough was a US businessman who expanded the overseas markets and pioneered multinational production chains for the farm machinery manufacturer Massey-Ferguson.[1] appointed as president of Massey-Ferguson.[2].
He attended the 1968 Bilderberg meeting, where one of the topics was The Internationalization of Business: The Social Aspect.
Career
Massey-Ferguson was struggling with a stagnating domestic market when it was bought in 1956 by Argus Corp. Ltd. an aggressive Canadian investment trust.
Time Magazine tells how "Argus, after getting a controlling interest in the company, put in as president Albert A. Thornbrough, a onetime farm boy from Kansas. Thornbrough promptly set the company on a new course. North American farms, he reasoned, were now so heavily mechanized that they must be considered a "mature" market. The real growth opportunity lay in the rest of the world, where agriculture was still heavily dependent on human labor.[2]
But Thornbrough thought that M-F could make more money and keep better control of its product if it built its own manufacturing organizations around the world. In 1959 M-F took over Perkins. Ltd. of Peterborough, England, a company from which it had been buying 160,000 diesel engines a year. It quickly followed that with the purchase of the Standard Motor Co's tractor factories, in Coventry. England, and in France, then expanded into Italy, South Africa, India and Brazil. By 1962, the company operated 26 factories in nine countries, manufactures 80% of what it sells v. only 25% in 1956. Design has been so meticulously standardized, says Thornbrough, that "we can get an engine from Peterborough, transmissions from Coventry, rear axles and hydraulics from France and fit them in with other parts in Detroit, India or Brazil, and make a completely assembled tractor to specifications."[2]
The result of Thornbrough's accent on overseas markets has been spectacular: Massey-Ferguson is now No. 1 in farm implement sales in Britain, France and Scandinavia and accounts for virtually the entire tractor market in such emerging nations as Ghana, Ceylon and Nigeria".[2]
Event Participated in
| Event | Start | End | Location(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilderberg/1968 | 26 April 1968 | 28 April 1968 | Canada Mont Tremblant | The 17th Bilderberg and the 2nd in Canada |
