What links a car repair shop in Rio de Janeiro, sparks flying in a backstreet alley, with the splendor of the Palace of Versailles? These contrasting places are connected by the history and products of French company Saint-Gobain. When the "Sun King" Louis XIV ordered a workshop to be set up in 1665 to manufacture the mirrors for the Palace of Versailles, nobody imagined it would evolve into one of Europe's biggest industrial concerns, with business connections around the world. Today, the Saint-Gobain multinational group has 174,000 employees. It reported sales revenues for 2003 of ?29.59 billion (approximately U.S.$33.17 billion) from the manufacture of glass, cast iron, plastic, and ceramic products.
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