Société Bic /

Société Bic (pronounced "Bick" in English) (Euronext: BB) is a company based in Clichy, France, founded in 1945, by Baron Marcel Bich known for making disposable products including lighters, magnets, ballpoint pens, shaving razors and watersports products. It competes in most markets against Faber-Castell, Global Gillette, Newell Rubbermaid and Schwan-Stabilo. The Bic pen, more correctly the Bic Cristal, was the company's first product and 50 years later is still synonymous with the name Bic. The company went public in 1958 with a reverse merger into the older Waterman Pen Company of Seymour, Connecticut, in the United States, and later sold off the older operation. The Bich family owns about 40 percent of Bic stock and controls 55% of its voting power. In June 2010 Bic sold its funeral products division to Prairie Capital, a Chicago based private equity firm. After buying the Waterman Pen Company in Seymour, Connecticut in 1958, Bic needed a larger space for its U.S. headquarters and manufacturing operation, so the headquarters was moved to nearby Milford, Connecticut, where it remained on a road eventually renamed "Bic Drive" until 2008, when the headquarters moved to Shelton,