50 Worcester Business Journal • www.wbjournal.com
25 YEARS: IN REVIEW
Top stories:
1990-2014
What were some of the biggest business
headlines in Central Massachusetts over the
last 25 years? Here's a year-by-year look from
the files of the WBJ.
L
ongtime Worcester manufacturer Norton Co. is acquired by French con-
glomerate Saint-Gobain in April, a month after Norton fends off a $1.64
billion hostile takeover bid by British firm BTR. The deal with Saint-
Gobain is estimated at $1.8 billion. Norton CEO John Nelson said the
Saint-Gobain offer was in the best interests of both firms.
Two days after it was ordered closed by a bankruptcy court, the Hotel Barre,
referred to as "the grand lady" because of its 19th century architecture, is destroyed
after an early-morning August fire in the center of the small town. In spite of the
timing, the court-appointed trustee said the property was secure when it closed and
there was little reason to believe its safety was at risk.
Plastics manufacturer Nypro Inc. of Clinton establishes a presence in the Soviet
Union, just after the beginning of the end of the Communist bloc in Eastern Europe
and a year before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Other companies were also look-
ing to make inroads into Eastern Europe. But Nypro founder Gordon Lankton, in
an interview with the WBJ in 2001, looked beyond revenue and profit to helping the
people of Russia. "Somebody's got to help those people. ... In a very small way, I'm
hoping that we're setting some type of example on how they can get out of
the mess that they're in," he said.
1990
The Hotel Barre,
destroyed by fire in
1990, is now just a
memory.
