Grundig files for bankruptcy

Grundig, the electronics firm that sold many Germans their first television sets in the 1950s, filed for bankruptcy today after rescue talks with foreign investors collapsed.

Nuremberg-based Grundig was one of the stars of an earlier tech boom, riding Germany’s post-Second World War economic revival by selling what were then high-tech gadgets such as car radios and tape recorders.

But it has struggled for years against competition from Asian producers and most recently posted a record annual loss of €150m in 2001.

Rescue talks with Taiwanese and Turkish electronics companies failed in the last few weeks.

The company’s postwar growth began when radio dealer Max Grundig began making repair and testing equipment used to keep precious pre-war radios going while production was impossible right after the war’s end.

Grundig then concocted a tubeless radio to evade restrictions imposed by occupying Allied authorities, on the pretext that a receiver without tubes didn’t count as a radio.

As Germany’s economy began to revive, Grundig achieved a sales hit with one of the first portable consumer radios, the Grundig Boy, in 1949.

The company was the largest producer of radio sets in Europe by the time television arrived in 1952, propelling further growth.

Grundig officials have maintained that the company’s brand name still has considerable value and that the company could be turned around by cutting costs and getting out of unprofitable lines of business.