Iowa’s world-renowned radio company is on its own, for the first time in nearly three decades. Rockwell-Collins spokesman Doug Wagner explains parent company Rockwell has spun off the avionics maker.C-E-O Clay Jones will open the New York Stock Exchange today, ringing the bell and opening trade in the company’s stock under the ticker symbol C-O-L. Wagner says the name will remain Rockwell-Collins, and the company’s influence will remain worldwide.Although based in Cedar Rapids, he says Rockwell-Collins has 17,500 workers worldwide, and is Iowa’s largest manufacturing and technical workforce employer. You may not be able to buy anything with the Rockwell-Collins brand name in a retail store, but its influence is deep in the electronics industry. For example, the company was involved in development of the Global Positioning System, today’s popular GPS receiver.The handheld GPS you can buy at hunting and fishing stores uses Collins technology developed over the past 15-20 years. The company’s grown from 16-thousand to 17-thousand-500 people within the last five years, and Wagner says no layoffs are expected from the spin-off. Wagner adds that Cedar Rapids’ Independence-Day fireworks traditionally are sponsored by Rockwell-Collins, which this year will celebrate independence of its own.
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