Tube Investments is history

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Tuesday, September 19th 2000 at 1:00AM

Before it was sold in 1986 Raleigh used to be called TI Raleigh. And Reynolds used to be TI Reynolds. The TI stood for Tube Investments, once one of the 30 biggest companies in the UK. Now the TI name is to be consigned to history as the TI Group joins with Smiths Industries

Sir Christopher Lewington, chairman of TI Group for 14 years, sold Raleigh when he first joined TI. He turned a maker of commodity steel tubes for the domestic market into an international engineering group.

Founded in 1919 in Birmingham, TI grew into one of the UK's 30 largest companies over the next 60 years before going into decline. Post-war competition from outside the UK was exacerbated by the 1980s recession.