Too many companies hide their names behind dull acronyms or meaningless initials.
All too often companies lumber themselves with such initials after a merger when they might be better off just sticking to an amalgam of their original names.
Consider the clunking G4S, behind which proudly sits the world’s biggest security company. Formed in 2004 from the merger of Group 4 Falck of Denmark and Britain’s Securicor, it at first adopted the perfectly sensible Group 4 Securicor, but in June 2007 switched to G4S for no apparent reason.
Another good, solid company sitting behind anonymous initials is SSL International, the business — although you would never guess from that title — that makes Durex condoms and Scholl footcare products. It has laboured under this name since Seton Scholl merged with London International Group 11 years ago. Calling itself Durex Scholl or Scholl Durex after its best-known brands would surely give the name more meaning.
And was there really any need for Kingston Communications, a sensible name highlighting that this was a communications business based in Kingston-upon-Hull, to rename itself KCOM?
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Some initials do stand the test of time. ICI lasted from its creation in 1926 as Imperial Chemical Industries, until its takeover in 2008 by the Dutch chemicals group Akzo Nobel. Its legacy lives on partly through IMI, a business that does everything from making drink vending machines to supplying valves and cooling systems, which stands for Imperial Metal Industries, a nod to its former ownership. BG Group also serves to remind that it was once part of the old British Gas.
3i is an odd name that has survived. The private equity company started in 1945 as Investors In Industry but changed its name to something reflecting its three initials.
Dixons, meanwhile, is just the latest in a series of good old company names to be exhumed. The classic example was Royal Mail Group, adopted in 2002 after a year masquerading as Consignia. John Roberts, chief executive at the time, said of the decision to ditch the Post Office moniker: “To consign means to entrust to the care of — which is what each of our customers does every day.”
Customers, however, made it quite plain they wanted something more meaningful.