July 13, 1998，Special Metals Corp. (SMC), New Hartford, N.Y., entered into a definitive agreement with Inco Ltd. to acquire its Inco Alloys International (IAI) business unit for $408 million in cash.
Nickel was first isolated as an element in the middle of the 18th century, but not until the following century did it come into demand as a coin metal. Up to around 1890, coining remained the metal's only use, and most of the world's nickel was mined by Le Nickel, a Rothschild company, on the island of New Caledonia. At that time, however, it was determined that steel made from an iron-nickel alloy could be rolled into exceptionally hard plates, called armor plate, for warships, tanks, and other military vehicles, and the resulting surge in demand spurred a worldwide search for nickel deposits. The world's largest nickel deposit ever discovered was in Ontario's Sudbury Basin; before long, one of the area's big copper mining companies, Canadian Copper, began shipping quantities of nickel to a U.S. refinery in Bayonne, New Jersey, the Orford Copper Company. Orford had devised the most economical process for refining nickel, and its alliance with Canadian Copper proved an unbeatable combination. Orford dominated the U.S. nickel business, supplying much of the metal needed by the growing steel industry, and managed to make inroads into the European market as well.
18 世纪中叶，镍首次作为一种元素被分离出来，但直到下个世纪，它才开始作为一种硬币金属而受到青睐。直到 1890 年左右，硬币仍然是镍金属的唯一用途，世界上大部分的镍都是由罗斯柴尔德家族的 Le Nickel 公司在新喀里多尼亚岛上开采的。然而，当时人们发现，用铁镍合金制成的钢材可以轧制成非常坚硬的板材，即装甲板，用于军舰、坦克和其他军用车辆。安大略省的萨德伯里盆地发现了世界上最大的镍矿床；不久之后，该地区的一家大型铜矿公司加拿大铜业公司（Canadian Copper）开始向位于新泽西州巴约恩（Bayonne）的美国奥福德铜业公司（Orford Copper Company）运送大量镍矿石。奥福德设计出了最经济的镍提炼工艺，它与加拿大铜业公司的联盟被证明是无与伦比的组合。奥福德主导了美国的镍业务，为不断发展的钢铁工业提供所需的大量金属，并成功打入欧洲市场。
The U.S. steel industry did not feel comfortable relying on a single Canadian source for one of its essential materials; so in 1902 Charles Schwab of U.S. Steel and a group of other steelmen used the financial backing of J.P. Morgan to take control of and merge Orford and Canadian Copper. The new company was called International Nickel, nicknamed Inco, and was based in New York. From the first, Inco was able to control a majority of the U.S. nickel market, and had increased its share to 70 percent by 1913. Its large-scale operations in the Sudbury Basin allowed the company to eliminate competition through price wars and sheer staying power. According to Fortune magazine in May 1957, Inco had maintained its control of the U.S. market without interruption for nearly 40 years.
1902 年，美国钢铁公司的查尔斯-施瓦布（Charles Schwab）和其他一些钢铁工人利用摩根大通（J.P. Morgan）的资金支持，控制并合并了奥福德公司和加拿大铜业公司。新公司名为国际镍业公司，绰号 Inco，总部设在纽约。从一开始，Inco 就控制了美国镍矿市场的大部分份额，到 1913 年，其份额已增至 70%。公司在萨德伯里盆地的大规模运营使其能够通过价格战和纯粹的持久力来消灭竞争。据 1957 年 5 月的《财富》杂志报道，Inco 在近 40 年的时间里从未间断过对美国市场的控制。
As the world's leading nickel producer, Inco enjoyed an enormous increase in business during World War I, when the need for armor-plate drove up steel sales. This good fortune soon changed, when the 1921 world disarmament agreements killed the munitions market and Inco was left with a huge backlog of nickel. Its record 1921 profit of US$2 million slipped to a US$1.2 million loss the following year, and the Sudbury mines were shut down for over six months. The shock of this setback stayed with the company for many years in the form of a conservative management policy and a determination to avoid large inventories. In 1922, Robert Crooks Stanley began a 30-year tenure as president--and later chairman--of Inco, intent upon building new markets in fields other than munitions. Stanley created a vigorous research and development department to find new peacetime uses for nickel. So effective were the Inco engineers that many of the innovations in nickel metallurgy over the next 50 years can be traced to their efforts. In effect, Inco became the research department for the entire nickel industry, sharing its findings with customer and competitor alike. Of course, for many years Inco had few of the latter.
作为世界领先的镍生产商，Inco 的业务在第一次世界大战期间大幅增长，当时对装甲板的需求推动了钢铁销售。这种好运气很快就改变了，1921 年的世界裁军协议扼杀了军火市场，Inco 留下了大量积压的镍。1921 年创纪录的 200 万美元利润在第二年滑落到 120 万美元的亏损，萨德伯里矿场停产超过六个月。这次挫折给公司带来的打击多年来一直伴随着保守的管理政策和避免大量库存的决心。1922 年，罗伯特-克鲁克斯-斯坦利（Robert Crooks Stanley）开始了长达 30 年的 Inco 总裁（后来成为董事长）任期，一心想在弹药以外的领域开拓新市场。斯坦利成立了一个强有力的研发部门，为镍寻找和平时期的新用途。Inco 的工程师们是如此卓有成效，以至于在接下来的 50 年里，镍冶金领域的许多创新都可以追溯到他们的努力。实际上，Inco 成为了整个镍工业的研究部门，与客户和竞争对手分享研究成果。当然，多年来 Inco 几乎没有竞争对手。
By the late 1920s, Stanley brought Inco sales back up to their wartime peak, much of the peacetime addition coming from the automobile industry. Inco's first major postwar investment was a US$3 million rolling mill in Huntington, West Virginia, designed to produce Monel metal, a widely used copper-nickel alloy. At the same time, Stanley effectively blocked the growth of competition from such newcomers as British America Nickel, which in 1923 made a serious bid for the U.S. market. Inco promptly lowered its price from 34 to 25 cents per pound, driving British America to bankruptcy a year later. When no one purchased the fallen company's assets, a little-known firm, Anglo-Canadian Mining & Refining, bought them very cheaply. Anglo-Canadian was actually a corporation owned by Inco, which simply took what it could use from British America's refinery and sold the rest for scrap.
到 20 世纪 20 年代末，斯坦利使 Inco 的销售额恢复到战时的最高水平，和平时期增加的销售额大部分来自汽车行业。Inco 在战后的第一项重大投资是在西弗吉尼亚州亨廷顿投资 300 万美元建造了一家轧钢厂，旨在生产一种广泛使用的铜镍合金--蒙乃尔金属。与此同时，斯坦利有效地阻止了英美镍业等新进入者的竞争，1923 年，英美镍业对美国市场发起了猛烈的竞争。Inco 立即将价格从每磅 34 美分降至 25 美分，一年后迫使英美公司破产。当无人购买这家倒闭公司的资产时，一家名不见经传的公司--英加矿业与精炼公司（Anglo-Canadian Mining & Refining）以非常低廉的价格买下了这些资产。Anglo-Canadian 实际上是 Inco 旗下的一家公司，它只是从英美公司的炼油厂中拿走了它能用到的东西，然后把剩下的当废铁卖掉。
A more serious competitor was handled in a different manner. Mond Nickel Company had been operating in the Sudbury Basin since just after the turn of the century, shipping its nickel to Europe to compete with France's Le Nickel and Inco's European offices. Mond, the creation of Ludwig Mond, the British chemist who founded Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), owned half of the best nickel deposits in Sudbury, in an area known as the Frood. The other owner of these deposits was Inco. In 1928, Inco decided it would be wiser to join forces rather than fight over the world's largest nickel mine. Mond and Inco were then merged at the end of that year to form International Nickel Co. of Canada, Ltd., still nicknamed Inco. Mond remained a U.K. subsidiary of Inco, handling both European and Asian customers. By moving its incorporation to a foreign country, Inco was better able to deflect inevitable and periodic attempts by the U.S. Department of Justice to prosecute the company for antitrust violations. The 1929 appearance of a small competitor called Falconbridge Nickel Mines Ltd., another European supplier, was only tolerated to avoid the impression of absolute monopoly.
一个更重要的竞争对手却以不同的方式被处理。蒙德镍矿公司（Mond Nickel Company）自本世纪初就在萨德伯里盆地开展业务，将镍矿运往欧洲，与法国镍矿公司（Le Nickel）和英科公司（Inco）的欧洲办事处竞争。蒙德公司由路德维希-蒙德（Ludwig Mond）创建，路德维希-蒙德是创建帝国化学工业公司（ICI）的英国化学家，他拥有萨德伯里最好的镍矿床的一半，该地区被称为 Frood。这些矿藏的另一个所有者是 Inco 公司。1928 年，Inco 决定与其争夺世界上最大的镍矿，不如联合起来。蒙德公司和 Inco 公司于同年年底合并，成立了加拿大国际镍业有限公司，昵称仍为 Inco。蒙德公司仍是 Inco 公司在英国的子公司，同时为欧洲和亚洲客户提供服务。通过将公司注册地转移到外国，Inco 更好地躲过了美国司法部以违反反垄断法为由对公司进行起诉的不可避免的定期尝试。1929 年，另一家欧洲供应商 Falconbridge Nickel Mines Ltd.（法尔肯布里奇镍矿有限公司）出现，但为了避免给人造成绝对垄断的印象，Inco 也只能忍气吞声。
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