It's Frankfurt am Main. Main is a river, and not a qualifier. It does not mean that this is the "Main Frankfurt" while the other Frankfurt, at the river Oder, is inferior. Sometimes English speakers get confused with that. And then there are many Frankfurts, for example in the United States. But these are not the Frankfurts we talk about, and I don't know anything about them.
But I know Frankfurt am Main, from my time working at Bosch Telecom in Kleyerstrasse. It was the attempt of the Bosch Group to get a foothold in the Telecom Equipment market, at the time telecom services were liberalized in Germany and other European countries. Via various steps, the "TELENORMA - Telephonbau und Normalzeit GmbH" was integrated into the Robert Bosch Group in 1989. It was said to be one of the world's best telecom engineering companies and went back to its foundation as a telegraph manufacturer in 1901. I was working as a management trainee in the early 90s, started in the Security Technology Division and was posted to Paris, where we bought JS Telecom and started a Post-Merger Integration. I personally learned a lot, even though the venture was not very successful. 1999 the public network division was sold to Marcony Company and private networks and devices went to the Private Equity company Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR) for 400 Mio USD, and rebranded TENOVIS. I was already at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) at that time. But I heard that a headcount cut of globally 40 % and having PE managers bragging that they were just released from jail for insider trading charges, did not go down too well. In 2006 the company was sold to AVAYA, and still, on Kleyer Strasse the office buildings are occupied, while the production facilities have, across the road have been converted. The more famous stories of " Fallen Angels" are companies like Kodak, Nokia, Erickson, Voigtländer, Borgward. But Telephonbau and Normalzeit, might also qualify for that category. Or perhaps it is more the Olivetti of telecommunication. This is how I came to Frankfurt am Main the first time. Now I am back. Times have changed, and I am re-entering the city from a different angle.
