Rolls-Royce Holdings

Ownership

Rolls-Royce grew from the engineering business of Henry Royce which was established in 1884 and ten years later began to manufacture dynamos and electric cranes. Charles Rolls established a separate business with Royce in 1904 because Royce had developed a range of cars which Rolls wanted to sell. A corporate owner was incorporated in 1906 with the name Rolls-Royce Limited.In 1971 the same company, Rolls-Royce Limited, entered voluntary liquidation because it was unable to meet its financial obligations. It remains in existence today, still in liquidation. Its business and assets were bought by the government using a company created for the purpose named Rolls-Royce Limited. Rolls-Royce Motors was separated out in 1973. Rolls-Royce Limited currently carries on the business under the name Rolls-Royce plc.Rolls-Royce plc returned to the stock market in 1987 under the government of Margaret Thatcher. In 2003 ownership of Rolls-Royce plc was passed to Rolls-Royce Group plc. In the same way, Rolls-Royce Group plc passed ownership on 23 May 2011 to Rolls-Royce Holdings plc. Throughout these corporate changes Rolls-Royce plc has remained the principal trading company.

Growth

The 1980s saw the introduction of a policy to offer an engine fitment on a much wider range of civil aircraft types, with the company's engines now powering 17 different airliners compared to General Electric's 14 and Pratt & Whitney's 10.The civil engines business represents the company's main area of growth. Between 2010 and 2018, Rolls-Royce invested £11 billion in facilities and R&D and launched six new civil engines including the Trent XWB and the Pearl 15 for the business aviation market. It secured orders for 2,700 engines for wide-body aircraft and business jets. It expects to produce over 600 wide-body engines a year and should power over half of the world's wide-body fleet within a few years, up from 22% a decade before.

Restructuring

In February 2017 Rolls-Royce posted its largest ever pre-tax loss of £4.6 billion; This included a £4.4 billion writedown on financial hedges that the company uses to protect itself against currency fluctuations, and a £671 million penalty to settle bribery and corruption charges with the Serious Fraud Office , the US Department of Justice, and Brazilian authorities.On 14 June 2018 the company announced a restructuring of the business to create three simpler decentralised units , to rationalise back office functions and to remove middle management functions. The cost savings should amount to £400 million per year by 2020, with an up-front restructuring cost of £500 million. Some 4,600 people are likely to leave the business out of 55,000 employed worldwide, 3,000 job losses from the UK and the rest from elsewhere in the world .In August 2018 Rolls-Royce announced it was taking a charge of £554 million to cover faults with some Trent 1000 engines on Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Rather than going thousands of hours between inspections, the faults with turbine blades mean the engines currently require inspection every 300 hours of flight. In the same announcement Rolls-Royce said it would spend £450m fixing faults on the Trent 1000 in 2018, £450m in 2019 and £350m in 2020, with the work complete by 2022.In May 2020, the company announced its intention to cut 20% of its workforce worldwide as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Around 3,000 job losses were expected in the UK, half of them in Derby.In February 2021, Rolls-Royce started talks concerning an operational shutdown of its civil aerospace unit that might last for two weeks due to the impact of Covid-19 and its restrictions.