GEC Plessey Telecommunications (GPT) was a British manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, notably the System X telephone exchange. The company was founded in 1988 as a joint venture between GEC and the British electronics, defence and telecommunications company Plessey. The next year, after a joint holding company of GEC and the German conglomerate Siemens AG acquired Plessey, GPT was converted into a 60/40 GEC/Siemens joint venture. The GPT name ceased to be used in the mid-1990s, and in 1998 the company was amalgamated into Siemens Communications. History Formation The evolution of GPT can be traced to 1986, when the General Electric Company (GEC) attempted a takeover of Plessey, a British-based international electronics, defence and telecommunications company founded in 1917; the takeover was barred by regulatory authorities. As an amicable solution, GEC and Plessey merged their telecommunications businesses (25,000 employees at the time) on 1 April 1988 as GEC Plessey Telecommunications. GPT was a world leader in many fields, for example Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) technology, and the merger brought the two companies responsible for developing and building the System X telephone exchange together, which was supposed to make selling System X simpler. GEC/Siemens joint venture: 1989–1998 In 1989, GEC and the German conglomerate Siemens made a hostile takeover of the Plessey Company through their joint holding company, GEC Siemens plc. While most of Plessey's assets were divided between the companies, GPT remained a joint venture with a 60/40 shareholding by GEC and Siemens respectively. In 1991, because Plessey no longer existed, GEC Plessey Telecommunications was renamed to just the initial letters GPT (or GPTel in France, since in French "GPT" sounds like "j'ai pété", "I have broken wind"). Merger into Siemens Communications During the mid-1990s, the name GPT gradually disappeared in the UK, and by October 1997 the joint venture, through a series of Siemens mergers and acquisitions, evolved into Siemens GEC Communication Systems (SGCS), which later in 1998 merged into Siemens Business Communication Systems (SBCS) to form the largest division of Siemens AG – Siemens Communications. Successors In August 1998, GEC acquired Siemens' 40% stake in GPT (by now only existing as a legal entity) and merged GPT with the telecoms units of its other subsidiaries – Marconi SpA, GEC Hong Kong and ATC South Africa – to form Marconi Communications. In December 1999, GEC's defence arm Marconi Electronic Systems was amalgamated with British Aerospace to form BAE Systems. The