Jabil Inc. is an American worldwide manufacturing services company. Headquartered in the Gateway area of St. Petersburg, Florida, it is one of the largest companies in the Tampa Bay area. Jabil has around 100 plants in 30 countries, and 260,000 employees worldwide. History The company's name derives from the first names of James Golden and William (Bill) E. Morean, who together founded the company in 1966. Jabil was formally incorporated in Detroit, Michigan, in 1969. One of the early products it manufactured was PCBs. In the 1980s, the company was making parts for PC companies like Dell, and this continued through the mid-1990s. The company went public in 1993. In 1998, Jabil began trading publicly on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol JBL. The company was then added to the S&P 500 Index in 2001. In 2014, the company was moved from the S&P 500 Index to the S&P MidCap 400 Index. On March 1, 2013, Jabil appointed William E. Peters as president and William D. Muir Jr. as chief operating officer. Both had been with Jabil for more than 20 years. On the same day, Mark Mondello was appointed CEO, replacing Timothy Main, elected chairman of the board of directors. The appointments were sparked by the retirement of board chairman William D. Morean, the son of one of the Jabil founders. In 2017, Jabil announced that it would be closing its first European international plant in Livingston, UK, by the end of the year. Two hundred sixty-six employees in Livingston would lose their jobs. Jabil laid off approximately 400 people in September of 2016, 100 of those being corporate employees located in St. Petersburg Florida. Business areas Jabil customers span numerous industries, including healthcare, life sciences, clean technology, instrumentation, defense, aerospace, automotive, computing, storage, consumer products, networking and telecommunications. Its services include design engineering, manufacturing and supply chain services for the EMS and consumer industries; and materials technology services (plastics, metals, automation and tooling). Jabil diversifies their business into three areas. Services Design engineering Jabil is involved in design engineering services. The company has industrial design services that concentrate on designing the look and feel of enclosures for printed circuit board assemblies and systems. Jabil's mechanical design services include dimensional design and analysis of electronic and optical assemblies. Computer-assisted design from Jabil includes testing and verification for printed circuit board assembly design and other consulting services. Jabil