Finance History | 11 Wall Street — Economics Laboratory Prints ECL

People treat Ecolab as a Saint Paul water-chemistry house that always printed ECL on a finished Big Board book.

The 1957 issuer was still Economics Laboratory, Inc., a Saint Paul sanitation company that sold common that year.

The company's Historical Milestones pamphlet records that M.J. Osborn and his son turned the family book public in 1957. Employees then held at least 25 percent of the common.

That paper was already public. It was not yet listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

In December 1986 Economics Laboratory Inc. changed its name to Ecolab Inc., a shorter mark meant to travel across countries.

The same pamphlet says that month Ecolab listed on the New York Stock Exchange under ECL.

A two-for-one split dated 16 July 1986 had already reset the share count before the listing month.

The mechanism is a mid-life Big Board listing of an already-public sanitation book, not a cash initial offering on the floor. Holders of the 1957 paper received a new name and a New York tape.

In 1987 the listed company bought ChemLawn for 376 million dollars in 1987 currency. It sold the lawn-care book in 1992 for 103 million dollars after losses.

The ticker is still ECL.

The pin is the Broad Street facade of the Exchange. Interior trading is not visitable from the sidewalk.

Photo: Arild Vagen, August 2017, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. New York Stock Exchange from Broad Street.