Sure enough, Culligan was acquired by American Filter Corp in 1999, which was acquired by the French conglomerate, Vivendi in 2001. Vivendi and its CEO were hit by an accounting scandal in 2002. The company was close to bankruptcy, couldn't afford the interest on the cost of a lot of acquisitions, and the CEO was burning through a lot of cash buying shares of the company on the market, trying to hold the price up. Eventually, the price per share fell from 80 to 10.
Now, it's back around 36. That's with a price/earnings ratio of about 16 and paying a 3.5% dividend. Very interesting. Since it's a French company (but with shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange), all its balance sheet and income numbers are computed in Euro's, then converted to dollars. So if the Euro goes up against the dollar that will increase the dollar amounrt of reported earnings.
That all sounds really good.
It's a multi-national, but without the negative connotations I associate with Suez and Bechtel, and it's a friendlier sort of name - don't you think? I'll have to look further into it.
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