House of Angostura
The House of Angostura known as Angostura Limited, is a Trinidad and Tobago company famous for the production of Angostura bitters, invented by the company's founder. The company is a distiller and is the major producer of rum in Trinidad and Tobago; the company has been used as a vehicle for international expansion by its parent company, CL Financial. As a result of these acquisitions, the company owns distillers in the United States, The Bahamas and Suriname; the company was founded around 1830 in the Venezuelan town of Angostura by a German doctor, Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert, Surgeon-General in Simon Bolivar's army in Venezuela. Around 1820 he had tried to find a medicine to improve appetite and digestive well-being of the soldiers. In 1830, Siegert exported his unique aromatic bitters to Trinidad. By 1850, he had resigned his commission in the Venezuelan army to concentrate on the manufacture of his bitters, since by demand had leapt ahead of supply. In 1862 the product was sampled in London, to great approval.
Upon his death in 1870, Siegert left the care of the company to his younger brother and son, who subsequently moved it to Port of Spain, Trinidad six years in 1876. Over the course of time, Angostura bitters and Dr. Siegert's company alone became purveyor to the King of Prussia and King George V. Today, angostura bitters are produced by various other vendors, some of which add the bark of the angostura tree. Angostura bitters are a key ingredient in many cocktails, for example in the Manhattan. Angostura brand bitters do not contain any angostura bark. There are several other companies that make bitters containing this bark, notably Fee Brothers and Riemerschmid; the word "Angostura" is the founding name of Ciudad Bolívar along the narrows of Venezuela's Orinoco River where Dr. Siegert was based, it was an important trading town with river access to the sea. In December 2016 questions arose regarding the integrity of Angostura rum, with CEO Robert Wong sent on administrative leave for two months.
Reports say Angostura breached EU rules of origin laws by purchasing bulk rum and repackaging it, without making any substantial changes. Javeed, Asha. "Audit into Angostura rum". Sunday Express. Sunday Express. Retrieved 11 December 2016. Forres Park Puncheon Rum: An over-proof rum developed for the exclusive use of the Fernandes family and their estate workers. White Oak: A white rum aged in American white oak barrels. Sold within the Caribbean and the top selling rum in Trinidad and Tobago. Fernandes Black Label: A golden rum, produced by Fernandes Distillers. Single Barrel Reserve: A blend of rums aged in single select bourbon oak casks for a minimun of five years. Angostura Reserva: A white rum sold internationally, aged for a minimum of three years before being filtered. Angostura 5 Year Old: A golden rum, available internationally aged for a minimum of five years. Angostura 7 Year Old: A dark rum, available internationally and aged for a minimun of seven years. 1919: A specially blended multiple award-winning rum, named for the year that it was blended.
1824: A premium Rum aged for a minimum of 12 years from casks specially selected by the master-blender. The name of this rum commemorates the year. 1787: A super-premium 15 year-old aged rum launched in 2016. 1787 marks the beginning of sugar production in Trinidad. Angostura No. 1 Premium Rum Cask Collection Batch: No. 1 is the first premium rum to be unveiled in The Cask Collection, a new limited-edition range dedicated to rums aged in special French bourbon casks. Aged 16 years. Only 15,030 bottles are available worldwide. Angostura No. 1: No. 1 is the first premium rum to be unveiled in The Cask Collection, a new limited-edition range dedicated to rums aged in special casks. Only 9,600 bottles are available worldwide. Legacy: A special blend of seven of the brand’s most rare and precious rums. Only 20 bottles have been produced and until 2014, this was the most expensive rum in the world. Media related to House of Angostura at Wikimedia Commons Angostura website
St Pancras railway station
St Pancras railway station known as London St Pancras and since 2007 as St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus on Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden. It is the terminus for Eurostar continental services from London via High Speed 1 and the Channel Tunnel to Belgium and the Netherlands, it provides East Midlands Trains and Thameslink services to Corby and Nottingham on the Midland Main Line and Southeastern high-speed trains to Kent via Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International, local Thameslink cross-London services. It stands between the British Library, the Regent's Canal and King's Cross railway station, with which it shares a London Underground station, King's Cross St. Pancras; the station was constructed by the Midland Railway, which had an extensive network across the Midlands and the North of England, but no dedicated line into London. After rail traffic problems following the 1862 International Exhibition, the MR decided to build a connection from Bedford to London with their own terminus.
The station was constructed with a single-span iron roof. Following the station's opening on 1 October 1868, the MR constructed the Midland Grand Hotel on the station's façade, praised for its architecture and is now a Grade I listed building along with the rest of the station. By the 1960s, St Pancras was surplus to requirements and services were diverted to King's Cross and Euston but there was fierce opposition to its proposed closure and demolition of the station and hotel; the station was reinvented in the late 20th century as the terminal for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in an urban regeneration plan across East London. The complex underwent a £800 million refurbishment, opened by Queen Elizabeth II in November 2007. A security-sealed terminal area was constructed for Eurostar services to continental Europe via High Speed 1 and the Channel Tunnel, with platforms for domestic trains to the north and south-east of England; the restored station has 15 platforms, a shopping centre, a coach facility.
St Pancras is owned by London and Continental Railways and managed by Network Rail, a subsidiary of Network Rail. St Pancras is at the southern end of the London Borough of Camden on a site orientated north/south, deeper than it is wide; the south is bounded by Euston Road, its frontage is the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, while the west is bounded by Midland Road which separates it from the British Library and the east by Pancras Road which separates it from King's Cross station. The British Library is on the former goods yard site. Behind the hotel, the train shed is elevated 5 m above street level and the area below forms the station undercroft; the northern half of the station is bounded to the east by Camley Street, with Camley Street Natural Park across the road. To the north-east is King's Cross Central known as the Railway Lands, a complex of intersecting railway lines crossed by several roads and the Regent's Canal. Several London bus routes serve St Pancras, including 10, 59, 73, 205 and 390.
The station's name comes from the St. Pancras neighbourhood, which originates from the fourth-century Christian boy martyr Pancras of Rome; the station was commissioned by the Midland Railway, who had a network of routes in the Midlands, in south and west Yorkshire and Lancashire but no route of its own to London. Before 1857 the MR used the lines of the L&NWR for trains into the capital. In 1862, traffic for the second International Exhibition suffered extensive delays over the stretch of line into London over the GNR's track; this was the stimulus for the MR to build its own line to London from Bedford, which would be just under 50 miles long. Samuel Carter was solicitor for the parliamentary bill, sanctioned in 1863; the station was designed by William Henry Barlow and constructed on a site, a slum called Agar Town. Though coal and goods were the main motivation to build the station, the Midland realised the prestige of having a central London terminus, decided it must have a front on Euston Road.
The company purchased the eastern section of land on the road's north side owned by Earl Somers. The approaching line to the station crossed the Regent's Canal at height allowing the line reasonable gradients. Initial plans were for a two or three span roof with the void between station and ground level filled with spoil from tunnelling to join the Midland Main Line to the St. Pancras branch. Instead, due to the value of the land in such a location the lower area was used for freight, in particular beer from Burton; as a result, the undercroft was built with columns and girders, maximising space, set out to the same plans as those used for beer warehouses, with a basic unit of length that of a beer barrel. The contract for the construction of the station substructure and connecting lines was given to Messrs. Waring, with Barlow's assistant Campion as supervisor; the lower floor for beer warehousing contained interior columns 15 ft wide, 48 ft deep carrying girders supporting the main station and track.
The connection to the Widened Lines ran below the station's bottom level, in an east-to-west direction. To avoid the foundations of the roof interfering with the space beneath, to simplify the design, and
James Purdey & Sons
James Purdey & Sons, or "Purdey", is a British gunmaker of London, specialising in high-end bespoke sporting shotguns and rifles. Purdey holds three Royal Warrants of appointment as gun and rifle makers to the British and other European royal families. James Purdey founded James Purdey & Sons Limited in London, England in 1814, locating his business on Princes Street. Prior to starting out on his own, Purdey worked as head stocker for Joseph Manton, the foremost gunmaker of his time. In 1826 the company moved from the Princes Street location to Manton's former premises in Oxford Street; the founder's son, James Purdey the Younger, took over the running of the company from his father in 1858. James the Younger saw rapid change in the development and design of guns and rifles during his lifetime moving from muzzle loading flintlocks in the 1820s to breech loading hammerless ejectors by the 1880s. James the Younger was always at the forefront of advances in the design and building of his guns and rifles, took out several patents for technical innovations over the years.
Many of James the Younger's patents were adopted by other gunmakers. In 1882 the company moved from Oxford Street to new premises on the corner of South Audley Street and Mount Street, where the company remains to this day. James the younger designed this building to accommodate his showroom, the factory, the building provided living quarters for James' family; the City of Westminster unveiled a memorial plaque on the shop at 57-60 South Audley Street on 30 April 1992. Purdey guns moved briskly from flintlock to percussion cap to hammer centre-fire guns and to the self-opening hammerless gun of 1880; this hammerless self opening mechanism was designed by Frederick Beesley, a Purdey worker of the time, used one limb of a V spring to operate the internal hammers and the other to operate the self opening feature. Beesley sold the patent to Purdey in 1880 for £55; this was followed ten years by the incorporation of ejectors. Apart from continual refinement and the optional single trigger mechanism little change has subsequently been made to the design of the side-by-side gun.
In 1900 Athol Purdey took over from his father and ran the business through the prosperous Edwardian years, as well as supervising Purdey's manufacturing of gun parts and other items of ordnance for the War Department during World War I. Athol's sons and Tom, both of whom had survived serious injuries whilst fighting in France, joined the firm in the 1920s, took over from Athol Purdey on his retirement circa 1929; the Purdey "over & under" gun is a development of the Woodward patent of 1913, incorporated into the company on the purchase of J. Woodward & Sons by Purdey in 1949. Whilst James Purdey & Sons is best known as a maker of shotguns, it produces rifles, both double-barrelled and bolt-action; the guns are custom-made by hand. They are expensive. A new Purdey shotgun starts at around £89,000. Richard Purdey, the sixth generation of the family from the founder, retired as Chairman in February 2007. Nigel Beaumont took over as Chairman until his retirement in 2014; the current Chairman is James Horne.
In 1946, after 132 years of Purdey family ownership, Hugh Seely, 1st Baron Sherwood, purchased James Purdey & Sons Ltd. In 1994, The Hon Richard Beaumont, Chairman since 1970, upon deciding to retire, sold James Purdey & Sons Ltd to Compagnie Financière Richemont SA; as early as 1838, Queen Victoria is recorded as having bought a pair of Purdey pistols. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the company supplied ornate guns and rifles to various Indian princes; the company was granted its first Royal Warrant in 1868 by The Prince of Wales King Edward VII. Official website
Egyptian Hall
The Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, was an exhibition hall built in the ancient Egyptian style in 1812, to the designs of Peter Frederick Robinson. The Hall was a considerable success, of Napoleonic era relics; the hall was used for popular entertainments and lectures, developed an association with magic and spiritualism, becoming known as "England's Home of Mystery". In 1905 the building was demolished to make way for offices; the Egyptian Hall was commissioned by William Bullock as a museum to house his collection, which included curiosities brought back from the South Seas by Captain Cook. It was completed in 1812 at a cost of £16,000, it was the first building in England to be influenced by the Egyptian style inspired by the success of the Egyptian Room in Thomas Hope's house in Duchess Street, open to the public and had been well illustrated in Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration. Unlike Bullock's Egyptian temple in Piccadilly, Hope's neoclassical façade betrayed no hint of the Egyptianizing decor it contained.
Detailed renderings of various temples on the Nile, the Pyramids and the Sphinx had been accumulating for connoisseurs and designers in works such as Bernard de Montfaucon's, ten-volume L'Antiquité expliquée et representée en figures, which reproduces, methodically grouped, all the ancient monuments, Benoît de Maillet's Description de l'Égypte, Richard Pococke's A Description of the East and Some Other Countries, Frederic Louis Norden's Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie. The plans for the hall were drawn up by architect Peter Frederick Robinson. Bullock, who had displayed his collection in Sheffield and Liverpool before opening in London, used the hall to put on various spectaculars, from which he made money from ticket sales; the museum was variously referred to as the London Museum, the Egyptian Hall or Museum, or Bullock's Museum. The Hall was a considerable success, with an exhibition of Napoleonic era relics in 1816 including Napoleon's carriage taken at Waterloo being seen by about 220,000 visitors.
In 1819, Bullock sold his ethnographical and natural history collection at auction and converted the museum into an exhibition hall. Subsequently, the Hall became a major venue for the exhibiting of works of art. Admission was one shilling. In 1820, The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault was exhibited from 10 June until the end of the year, rather overshadowing Benjamin Robert Haydon's painting, Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, on show in an adjacent room. In 1821, exhibitions included Giovanni Battista Belzoni's show of the tomb of Seti I in 1821, James Ward's gigantic Allegory of Waterloo. In 1822, a family of Laplanders with their reindeer were imported to be displayed in front of a painted backdrop, give short sleigh-rides to visitors; the bookseller George Lackington became owner of the Hall in 1825 and went on to use the facilities to show panoramas, art exhibits, entertainment productions. The Hall became associated with watercolours; the old Water-Colour Society exhibited there in 1821–22, it was hired by Charles Heath to display the watercolours commissioned by from Joseph Mallord William Turner forming Picturesque Views in England and Wales.
Turner exhibited at the Hall for a number of years and it was used as a venue for exhibitions by the Society of Painters in Water Colours. In the "Dudley Gallery" at the Egyptian Hall, the valuable collection of pictures belonging to the Earl of Dudley was deposited during the erection of his own gallery at Dudley House in Park Lane; the room gave its name to the Dudley Gallery Art Society when they were founded in 1861 and used it for their exhibitions. It was the venue chosen for their first exhibitions by the influential New English Art Club; the hall lectures. Here Albert Smith related his ascent of Mont Blanc, illustrated by some cleverly dioramic views of the Alpine peaks. By the end of the 19th century, the Hall was associated with magic and spiritualism, as a number of performers and lecturers had hired it for shows. In 1873 William Morton took on the management of the Hall and modified it for his protegees and Cooke, whose run there lasted a remarkable 31 years; the Hall became known as England's Home of Mystery.
Many illusions were staged including the exposition of fraudulent spiritualistic manifestations being practised by charlatans. The final performance was on 5 January 1905. In 1905 the building was demolished to make room for blocks of flats and offices at 170–173 Piccadilly. Muirhead Bone captured its demise in his work The Dissolution of Egyptian Hall; the Maskelynes relocated to the St. George's Hall in Langham Place, which became known as Maskelyne's Theatre. Egyptian Revival architecture in the British Isles Egyptian revival decorative arts List of demolished buildings and structures in London History and internal and external images History of the Egyptian Hall
DAKS
DAKS is a British luxury fashion house, founded in 1894 by Simeon Simpson in London. DAKS holds royal warrants granted from three members of one of 15 firms to do so. Granted to DAKS' Simpson Piccadilly store in 1956 was the royal warrant of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, followed by that of HM The Queen in 1962 and HRH The Prince of Wales in 1982. Worldwide, DAKS is exported to 30 countries and sold in over 2,000 specialty shops, major stores and concessions; the name is a combination of the initials of Alexander Simpson and an initial and final letter of his business associate Dudley Beck. In 1894 Simeon Simpson, aged 16, rented a room on Middlesex Street, East London, with the intention of setting up a business in bespoke tailoring, focused on high standard craftsmanship. Several innovations of technology at the time were being introduced with machinery capable of making buttonholes and electric powered saws to cut many layers of fabric at once – Simpson saw the potential for such equipment for producing garments in higher quantities while still upholding quality tailoring techniques, aiming to improve ready-to-wear standards as no male or female professionals considered ready-to-wear for suitable attire at the time.
Simpson's methods proved successful in speeding up the process and he set up several factories within London, which soon required expansion in its early years through popularity of the label. Alexander Simpson, his second son, joined the business aged 15 in 1917, by 1929 had planned and opened a larger factory in Stoke Newington where production could be centralised, this again had to be enlarged a few years later. With the continued growth of the company Alexander Simpson began to take more control of the business, in 1935 DAKS gained further fame for the S Simpson brand as an innovation in the tailoring world of the first self-supporting trouser, he went about to invent a way to support his trousers that wouldn't need braces as these interrupted his swing whilst playing golf and caused his shirt to become untucked. The DAKS trouser was invented – it had a channel within the waistband at the back wherein an elasticated strip was attached at the sides with tabs attached to one of two buttons for adjustment.
On the inside of the waistband were sewn-on rubber pads that gripped the shirt and stopped it from becoming loose. This happened in a world where to buy a pair of trousers of high quality one would have to have a bespoke pair made by a tailor, thus this new design allowed the ease of ready-to-wear trousers. Simpson was so sure of his new design that he had 100,000 pairs made before being introduced to the public at a high price of 30 shillings in a time when a whole bespoke suit would cost 50 shillings; the trousers were available in many colours and fabrics that weren't associated with menswear. They became so popular that the trousers were incorporated into suits and soon after a DAKS womenswear line was released, using the patented waistband for skirting; the inception of the DAKS name was aiming to be something short and eye catching and is an arrangement of initials from the two men involved in its development –'AS' for Alexander Simpson and'DK' for his business associate Dudley Beck hence why the name is capitalised.
The advertising agent involved for the promotion of these new trousers, Sir William Crawford of WS Crawford Ltd thought up the idea to market them as'Dad's Slacks' as it had connotations of reliability and comfort whilst sounding similar to the name DAKS. At the turn of the 21st century when the company was acquired by Japanese group Sankyo Seiko Co. Limited in 1991, the S Simpson name was dropped and DAKS became the new brand name; the ease-of-wear of the trousers and how they allowed movement, as intended from Simpson's invention, led to DAKS being popular in sporting wear – kitting tennis, motor racing, football players, for the British Olympic team in 1960. The quality of S Simpson tailoring was such that the company was commissioned by the British Government at the time of the Second World War to produce military uniforms for officers in the Army, Royal Airforce and Women's Services despite the semi-destruction of the Stoke Newington factory due to bomb damage and loss of electricity – with about seven million garments made for military services being produced.
After the war when DAKS clothes were announced to start selling to the public again queues of people would form down Piccadilly, to which Simpson tailors would measure them in line and present suitable pairs of trousers to them when they got into the Simpsons of Piccadilly store. Simeon Simpson's son Alexander Simpson, owner of the company, decided he wanted to find a'window' for Simpson clothes in the heart of London, he founded Simpsons of Piccadilly when the Geological Museum had closed and the site to be auctioned. The new building was designed by architect Joseph Emberton as a new and revolutionary retail establishment, the shop front windows exhibited the first curved glass display in Great Britain and the largest in the world at the time, these were designed so that no reflection would be cast to obscure the displays inside; the outstanding feature of the shop's interior was the travertine staircase that ran up through the centre of the store lit by a continuous window up the height of the building.
The current lighting structure suspended through the staircase centre is the original from the 1930s as the building has since become a listed building. The store opened in April 1936 by the world-famous motor-racing driver, and was famed for its visual merchandising and window displays by László Moholy-Nagy, a former director from the Bauhaus school. Opening the s
BT Group
BT Group plc is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line and mobile services in the UK, provides subscription television and IT services. BT's origins date back to the founding of the Electric Telegraph Company in 1846 which developed a nationwide communications network. In 1912, the General Post Office, a government department, became the monopoly telecoms supplier in the United Kingdom; the Post Office Act of 1969 led to the GPO becoming a public corporation. British Telecommunications, trading as British Telecom, was formed in 1980, became independent of the Post Office in 1981. British Telecommunications was privatised in 1984, becoming British Telecommunications plc, with some 50 percent of its shares sold to investors; the Government sold its remaining stake in further share sales in 1991 and 1993. BT is a Royal Warrant holder of the British Royal Family and has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange, a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange, is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
BT controls a number of large subsidiaries. BT Global Services division supplies telecoms services to corporate and government customers worldwide, its BT Consumer division supplies telephony and subscription television services in Great Britain to around 18 million customers. A number of owned telegraph companies operated in Britain from 1846 onwards. Among them were: The Electric Telegraph Company British and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company British Telegraph Company London District Telegraph Company and the United Kingdom Telegraph CompanyThe Telegraph Act 1868 passed the control of all these to the newly formed GPO's Postal Telegraphs Department. With the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 the GPO began to provide telephone services from some of its telegraph exchanges. In 1882 the Postmaster-General, Henry Fawcett started to issue licences to operate a telephone service to private businesses and the telephone system grew under the GPO in some areas and private ownership in others.
The GPO's main competitor, the National Telephone Company, emerged in this market by absorbing other private telephone companies, prior to its absorption into the GPO in 1912. The trunk network was unified under GPO control in 1896 and the local distribution network in 1912. A few municipally owned services remained outside of GPO control; these were Kingston upon Hull and Guernsey. Hull still retains an independent operator, Kingston Communications, though it is no longer municipally controlled. In 1969 the GPO, a government department, became the Post Office, a nationalised industry separate from government. Post Office Telecommunications was one of the divisions; the British Telecom brand was introduced in 1980. On 1 October 1981, this became the official name of Post Office Telecommunications, which became a state-owned corporation independent of the Post Office under the provisions of the British Telecommunications Act 1981. In 1982 BT's monopoly on telecommunications was broken with the granting of a licence to Mercury Communications.
On 19 July 1982, the Government announced its intention to sell shares in British Telecom to the public. On 1 April 1984, British Telecommunications was incorporated as a public limited company in anticipation of the passing of the Telecommunications Bill; this Bill received Royal Assent on 12 April, the transfer to British Telecommunications plc from British Telecom as a statutory corporation of its business, its property, its rights and liabilities took place on 6 August 1984. All shares in the new plc were owned by the Government. In November 1984, 50.2 % of the new company was offered for sale to employees. Shares were listed in London, New York, Toronto and the first day of trading on was 3 December 1984; the Government sold half its remaining interest in December 1991 and the other half in July 1993. In July 1997, the new Labour Government relinquished its Special Share, retained at the time of the flotation, which had given it the power to block a takeover of the company, to appoint two non-executive directors to the Board.
The company changed its trading name to "BT" on 2 April 1991. In 1996 Peter Bonfield was appointed CEO and Chairman of the Executive Committee, promising a "rollercoaster ride". In the 1990s, BT entered the Irish telecommunications market through a joint venture with the Electricity Supply Board, the Irish state owned power provider; this venture, entitled Ocean, found its main success through the launch of Ireland's first subscription-free dial-up ISP, oceanfree.net. As a telecoms company it found much less success targeting corporate customers. BT acquired 100% of this venture in 1999. In June 1994 BT and MCI Communications launched Concert Communications Services, a $1 billion joint venture between the two companies, its aim was to build a network which would provide easy global connectivity to multinational corporations. This alliance progressed further on 3 November 1996 when the two companies announced that they had agreed to a merger, creating a global telecommunications company called Concert plc.
The proposal gained approval from the European Commission, the US Department of Justice, the US Federal Communications Commission and looked set to proceed. However, in light of pressure from investors reacting to the slide in BT's share price on the London Stock Exchange, BT reduced its bid price for MCI, releasing MCI from its exclusivity clause and allowing it to speak to other interested parties. On 1 October 1997, Worldcom made a rival bid for MCI which wa
Britvic
Britvic plc is a British producer of soft drinks based in Hemel Hempstead. It is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index, it produces soft drinks under its own name. The company was founded in the mid-twentieth century in Chelmsford as the British Vitamin Products Company, it started producing fruit juices in 1938 and started marketing them under the Britvic name in 1949. Acquired by Showerings of Shepton Mallet, subsequently a division of Allied Breweries from 1968, the company changed its name to Britvic in 1971. In 1986 it acquired the R. White's Lemonade brand, it acquired Tango and the Corona brand from Beechams in 1987 and since that year it has owned the UK franchise for Pepsi and 7 Up. In 1995 it bought Robinson's from Colman. In December 2005 the company underwent an initial public offering allowing its main shareholders to realise their investments. In May 2007 the Company went on to buy the soft drinks and distribution businesses of Ireland's Cantrell & Cochrane for £169.5m. On 14 November 2012 the company announced plans to merge with Scotland's soft drink's producer A.
G. Barr, whose brands include Irn-Bru, Tizer and D'n'B, which would have created one of Europe's largest soft drinks companies; the merger was put into serious doubt after the Office of Fair Trading referred the merger to the Competition Commission. On 11 July 2013, A. G. Barr Chairman Ronnie Hanna announced that the proposed merger of Britvic and A. G. Barr had been abandoned. In May 2017, PepsiCo announced that it had decided to sell up to all of its long-held 4.5 per cent stake in Britvic. Although most of its operations are concentrated in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the company's international arm is expanding and it now exports to over 50 countries. Corporate headquarters moved from Chelmsford, Essex to Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, in March 2012; the company owns a number of leading brands in the UK including Britvic itself, R. White's Lemonade, Robinson's and J2O – as well as being the licensed bottler for PepsiCo products within the UK. In 2008 Britvic launched Gatorade in the UK, after securing the rights to do so from PepsiCo.
In May 2010, Britvic launched. It has a higher caffeine and sugar content. After their failed IPO C&C's sold their soft drink brands to Britvic, resulting in the company now owning a number of leading brands in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, Ballygowan water, Cidona, MiWadi, Energise Sport as well as the rights to Pepsi and 7 Up brands in the territory through its bottling agreements with PepsiCo. Britvic bought Fruité Entreprises in May 2010 for £298 million, it has since renamed the business Britvic France. It is a fruit juice business, unlike the GB&I businesses that focus on soft drinks. In 2015 Britvic acquired ebba, located in São Paulo, in 2017 Bela Ischia, located in Rio de Janeiro. Current brands are as follows: Official site
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