Rolls-Royce Holdings plc is a British multinational aerospace and defence company incorporated in February 2011. The company owns Rolls-Royce, a business established in 1904 which today designs, manufactures and distributes power systems for aviation and other industries. Rolls-Royce is one of the world's largest manufacturers of aircraft engines and has major businesses in the marine propulsion and energy sectors.
Rolls-Royce was the world's 16th largest defence contractor in 2018 when measured by defence revenues. The company is also the world's fourth largest commercial aircraft engine manufacturer, with a 12% market share .
Rolls-Royce Holdings plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange, where it is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. At the close of London trading on 11 February 2025, the company had a market capitalisation of £52.66bn, the 11th-largest of any company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange.
The company's registered office is at Kings Place, near Kings Cross in London.
History Ownership Rolls-Royce grew from the engineering business of Henry Royce, which was established in 1884 and ten years later began to manufacture dynamos and electric cranes. Charles Rolls established a separate business with Royce in 1904 because Royce had developed a range of cars which Rolls wanted to sell. A corporate owner was incorporated in 1906 with the name Rolls-Royce Limited.
In 1971 the same company, Rolls-Royce Limited, entered voluntary liquidation because it was unable to meet its financial obligations. It remains in existence today, still in liquidation. Its business and assets were bought by the government using a company created for the purpose named Rolls-Royce (1971) Limited. Rolls-Royce Motors was separated out in 1973. Rolls-Royce (1971) Limited currently carries on the business under the name Rolls-Royce plc.
Rolls-Royce plc returned to the stock market in 1987 under the government of Margaret Thatcher. In 2003 ownership of Rolls-Royce plc was passed to Rolls-Royce Group plc. In the same way, Rolls-Royce Group plc passed ownership on 23 May 2011 to Rolls-Royce Holdings plc.Rolls-Royce Holdings plc, Annual Report 2011 accessed 27 January 2017 Throughout these corporate changes Rolls-Royce plc has remained the principal trading company.Companies with shares available to the general public 1906 company, Rolls-Royce Limited. Its shares became more or less valueless in 1971 and their price sank as low as a penny from a high of £1.25. By the time the liquidation was effectively complete those shareholders had received more than £0.60 per share from the liquidation and they may have bought them for around a penny. 1971 company, floated as Rolls-Royce plc still owns the principal business but itself was sold to the new holding company in 2003 2003 company floated as Rolls-Royce Group plc bought the 1971 company 2011 company floated as Rolls-Royce Holdings plc bought the 1971 company from the 2003 company
Growth The 1980s saw the introduction of a policy to offer an engine fitment on a much wider range of civil aircraft types, with the company's engines now powering 17 different airliners (and their variants) compared to General Electric's 14 and Pratt & Whitney's 10.
The civil engines business represents the company's main area of growth. Between 2010 and 2018, Rolls-Royce invested £11 billion in facilities and R&D and launched six new civil engines including the Trent XWB and the Pearl 15 for the business aviation market. It secured orders for 2,700 engines for wide-body aircraft and business jets. It expects to produce over 600 wide-body engines a year and should power over half of the world's wide-body fleet within a few years, up from 22% a decade before.
In 2023, Rolls-Royce entered into an agreement for $3.52 million of funding with the UK Space Agency for the creation of a nuclear reactor on the moon. The project is intended to provide power for space missions.
Restructuring In 2014 and 2015, Rolls-Royce issued at least four profit warnings due to US defence cuts, a downturn in the offshore oil and gas market and its civil aerospace business, the company initiated job cuts of over 3,000 in response. Rolls-Royce had been selling many of its aero-engines in combination with long-term service contracts. Even though the company booked profits in part with the delivery of the engine, actual payments only came in over time. Between 2003 and 2015, it sold a majority of its engines with these “TotalCare” contracts. The company announced it would no longer be able to move its revenues forward from its long-term service contracts to compensate for its contracts being unprofitable in the early stages after the introduction of IFRS 15 in 2018 and its profits for 2015 would have been £900m lower than the £1.4bn it reported if it had followed the new accounting standard.
In February 2017, Rolls-Royce posted its largest ever pre-tax loss of £4.6 billion; This included a £4.4 billion writedown on financial hedges that the company uses to protect itself against currency fluctuations, and a £671 million penalty to settle bribery and corruption charges with the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), the US Department of Justice, and Brazilian authorities.
On 14 June 2018, the company announced a restructuring of the business to create three simpler decentralised units (civil aerospace, defence and power systems), to rationalise back office functions and to remove middle management functions. The cost savings should amount to £400 million per year by 2020, with an up-front restructuring cost of £500 million. Some 4,600 people are likely to leave the business out of 55,000 employed worldwide, 3,000 job losses from the UK and the rest from elsewhere in the world (15,700 of the employees work in Derby and 10,300 work elsewhere in the United Kingdom).
In August 2018, Rolls-Royce announced it was taking a charge of £554 million to cover faults with some Trent 1000 engines on Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Rather than going thousands of hours between inspections, the faults with turbine blades mean the engines currently require inspection every 300 hours of flight. In the same announcement Rolls-Royce, said it would spend £450m fixing faults on the Trent 1000 in 2018, £450m in 2019 and £350m in 2020, with the work complete by 2022.
In May 2020, the company announced its intention to cut 20% of its workforce (approximately 9,000 staff) worldwide as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Around 3,000 job losses were expected in the UK, half of them in Derby.
In February 2021, Rolls-Royce started talks concerning an operational shutdown of its civil aerospace unit that might last for two weeks due to the impact of Covid-19 and its restrictions.
Rolls-Royce announced, in October 2023, that it would cut 2,500 jobs, or 6 per cent of its total workforce.
Under CEO Tufan Erginbilgiç Rolls Royce has seen a remarkable turnaround. In July 2025 the share price hit £11 for the first time, from £1 three years ago. Rolls Royce is now the fifth largest company in the FTSE 100 index, valued at £90 billion. Midterm 2027 targets for operating profit were hit two years ahead of estimates, and a jump from £2.6-2.9 billion in 2025 to £3.6-£3.9 billion in 2028 is projected in terms of operating profit per annum. In July the estimates for operating profit for full year 2025 were uprated by £300 million.
Senior leadership
Chairman: Anita Frew (since October 2021) Chief Executive: Tufan Erginbilgic (since January 2023)
List of former chairmen
Sir Simon Robertson (2011–2013) Sir Ian Davis (2013–2021)
List of former chief executives
John Rishton (2011–2015) Warren East (2013–2022)
Facilities
Testing Rolls-Royce's £90 million Testbed 80 in Derby is the largest of its kind, sized for engines of up to of thrust. Design started in 2017, construction began in 2018 and it was officially opened in 2021. The facility is long, has a tall intake tower and a tall exhaust stack. Built from 3,450 tons of steel and of concrete, it has a tall and wide enclosed space and it can handle a 66 tons engine including its carrier. The company completed its first engine run on the new test bed in July 2024.
X-ray imaging allows to visualize the position of seals and clearances in real time while an engine is running. While it was retrofitted on Rolls' test bed 57, test bed 80 is the first to be purpose-designed for industrial radiography. To protect from external X-ray, 30 cm (11.8 in.) of lead, double walls are up to 8.9 ft. (2.7 m) thick (a 5.6-ft. interior wall and 3.3-ft. exterior wall) and provide acoustic insulation. Canadian prime contractor MDS Aero Support is responsible for design and management, test systems supply, engine adapters, support systems and data acquisition and control while construction is done by Buckingham Group Contracting.
Acquisitions Northern Engineering Industries / broken up and sold In 1988, Rolls-Royce acquired Northern Engineering Industries (NEI), based in the North East of England, a group of heavy engineering companies mainly associated with electrical generation and power management. The group included Clarke Chapman (cranes), Reyrolle (now part of Siemens) and Parsons (now part of Siemens steam turbines). The company was renamed Rolls-Royce Industrial Power Group. It was sold off piecemeal over the next decade as the company re-focused on its core aero-engine operations following the recession of the early 1990s.
Allison Engine Company On 21 November 1994, Rolls-Royce announced it had agreed terms to acquire the Allison Engine Company, an American manufacturer of gas turbines and components for aviation, industrial and marine engines.Rolls buys Allison Australian Aviation issue 104 March 1995 page 58Lazonick, William & Prencipe, Andrea. "Sustaining the Innovation Process: The Case of Rolls-Royce plc" page 18. Retrieved 18 September 2010. Archive The two companies had a technical association dating back to the Second World War. Rolls-Royce had previously tried to buy the company when General Motors sold it in 1993, but GM opted for a management buyout instead for $370 million. Owing to Allison's involvement in classified and export restricted technology, the 1994 acquisition was subject to investigation to determine the national security implications.Ashbourne, Alex. Opening the US Defence Market Centre for European Reform page 6, October 2000. Retrieved 18 September 2010. On 27 March 1995, the US Department of Defense announced that the "deal between Allison Engine Co. and Rolls-Royce does not endanger national security."DoD is satisfied that deal between Allison Engine Co. and Rolls Royce does not endanger national security United States Department of Defense 27 March 1995. Retrieved 3 October 2012. Archived on 14 October 2013. Rolls-Royce was, however, obliged to set up a proxy board to manage Allison and had also to set up a separate company, Allison Advanced Development Company, Inc., to manage classified programmes "that involve leading-edge technologies" such as the Joint Strike Fighter programme. In 2000, this restriction was replaced by a more flexible Special Security Arrangement.Lorell et al Going Global? page 175, RAND Corporation, 2002. Retrieved 18 September 2010. Archive In 2001, Rolls-Royce and its LiftSystem was among the group that won the JSF contract for the F-35.Bolkcom, Christopher. JSF: Background, Status, and Issues page CRS-4, dtic.mil, 16 June 2003. Retrieved 18 September 2010. Archive
The Allison acquisition, at $525 million, brought four new engine types into the Rolls-Royce civil engine portfolio on seven platforms and several light aircraft applications. Allison is now known as Rolls-Royce North America.
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