GKN's market dominance in its chosen niches is the key to increased profitability, says Beresford.
But helicopters, historically volatile and prone to cost-cutting demands by governments, may be GKN's weak link.
Beresford says that GKN's businesses are all in the down phase of their cycles.
Such acquisitions kept GKN going when steelmaking and the low-tech bits of its business declined.
Beresford says that GKN holds a 16% share of the highly fragmented market (No. 2, Federal Mogul, has 4%).
In 2000 GKN's industrial service sales jumped 19%, and its profits rose 15%.
By the time GKN split itself, industrial services accounted for 19% of sales and a whopping 30% of operating profit.
At the Frankfurt Motor Show in September, GKN unveiled its new electronic torque-management system--think of it as artificial intelligence for the driveline.
GKN's driveline systems are widely regarded as the best in the world.
Last year two plants (one belonging to GM in Germany, the other to Nissan in Japan) began to buy their drivelines from GKN.
Representatives from the City of Bristol College, GKN Aerospace, Rolls Royce, Airbus and the University of the West of England attended the ceremony.
Why, when so many widget-makers have gone to the wall or been bought up by foreigners, is GKN alive and kicking and British-owned after 253 years?
But on the bright side, GKN has a leading share in four niche markets, all of which could grow rapidly if automakers and planemakers outsource more of their components.
In addition, GKN has a big presence in developing countries where automotive sales are expanding by 8% a year, four times the rate of growth in the world as a whole.
The principal share of GKN's profits--69%--come from automotive components.
Other companies include Messier-Dowty, which has a base in Gloucestershire, Somerset's AgustaWestland, GKN Aerospace in Redditch, Worcestershire, and the ADS group which has its HQ in London and a show centre in Farnborough.
Although some large companies - including HSBC, Diageo, Anglo-American, Cadbury, Rolls Royce, GKN, BAT, BP, Shell and BG - have had a presence in Brazil for many years, several sectors have been ignored.
Its expertise in new materials has made GKN a cornerstone of Britain's aerospace industry, said by the government to be the largest outside America and one of the shining hopes for future growth in manufacturing.
When Britain's GKN finished spinning off its fast-growth, high-profit industrial services operations in August, a lot of investors looked at what was left and concluded that the 240-year-old engineering company had sold off the best part of its franchise.
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