Brief History of Umbrella Corporation

• Spring 1968: Ozwell E. Spencer, Edward Ashford and James Marcus establish "Umbrella Pharmaceutical".
  
• Unknown Dates: Two more companies named "Umbrella Medical Equipment" and "Umbrella Industries" are established. The companies form a konzern; a conglomerate named the "Umbrella Corporation".
  
• 1984: Umbrella Japan Co., Ltd is established.
  
• May~October 1998: The biohazard caused in the Arklay Laboratory leads to a string of events which seal the corporation's fate.
  
• 1999: Many lawsuits are filed against Umbrella. The U.S. Government issues an indefinite suspension of business decree to Umbrella U.S.A.
  
• February 1999: Umbrella U.S.A. stocks crash and the company goes bankrupt, no longer operating in America. Business begins to stall for the rest of the company and sales steadily decline.
  
• September 18~23, 2002: Umbrella lose many valuable samples and customers due to the bioterror incident on the Spencer Rain. The secret auction planned by Ozwell E. Spencer to procure funds for the revival of the corporation fail.
  
• February 18, 2003: The T-A.L.O.S. Interdiction Operation takes place. Both T-A.L.O.S. and Sergei Vladimir are destroyed, and the U.M.F.-013 is stolen by Albert Wesker.
  
• 2003: Albert Wesker turns in data from the U.M.F.-013 as evidence against Umbrella to the Supreme Court. The corporation loses all of its cases.
  
• 2003, 4th of unknown month: Umbrella Headquarters announces that it is close to being placed in receivership.
  
• 2003, unknown date: A business suspension order is issued to dismantle the Umbrella Corporation. Some of Umbrella's dummy companies and branches outside the U.S. continue acting secretly.
  
• March 10, 2004: The Umbrella board of directors decide the dissolution of Umbrella.
  
• March 14, 2004: The "Announcement of Company Dissolution" is posted, and the Umbrella Corporation ceases to exist.

I'm hoping this topic will help flesh out the infamous corporation even more. There's still quite a lot we don't know. I'm in the process of making a major revision to the article on Project Umbrella so this will help a great deal. I have no real idea how accurate the brief history above is, there's still some confusion even with Umbrella's downfall (there are two business suspension orders at two different times) and the exact date the company went bust is also iffy (implied to be 2003 most places, but Umbrella Japan went out "congruent to" the corporation in March 2004). I'd like for it to be discussed in detail here.

Secondly, I believe that Umbrella was originally established in Germany or at least held significant presence there. The Umbrella Corporation itself is a "konzern", which is a German business type. The Ashford family was originally the Krueger family, German aristocrats. Now they are English aristocrats (Ashford is an English name, Alfred was educated in England, they all have quite noticeable English accents in their portrayals). In a CV ad which has a few minor background details from the scenario draft, Alexia was the head of the Umbrella Germany Laboratory when she was nine before becoming head of the South Pole Base a year later.

Spencer is an English surname, but it has French origins. The Spencer family could be either/or. I believe he was referred to as a "count" in the earliest scenario for BH4? If so, that would make him French. The English equivalent to a count is an "earl". Spencer being French would also explain the heavy emphasis on France throughout the series.

Finally, I would really love to actually figure out how Umbrella was structured. It was a konzern, so it was a conglomerate made up of several smaller companies. However, what were these companies? We can be sure that Umbrella Pharmaceutical, Umbrella Medical Equipment and Umbrella Industries were among them, but what about Umbrella Japan, Umbrella Europe and Umbrella U.S.A.? Was Umbrella Japan a subsidiary or an independent company? Were Umbrella Europe and Umbrella U.S.A. independent companies or were they just branches? If they were just branches, what company in the konzern were they branches of? Etc. I'd like to figure this all out.

Here are the relevant excerpts, more will eventually be added as the topic progresses and there is a bigger need (and hopefully, more sources discovered):

http://i.imgur.com/OywCu.jpg - BIOHAZARD CODE:Veronica Advertisement (text appears to be from original scenario draft albeit translated, the inclusion of minor background details resembles the bits of info in Noboru Sugimura's GUN SURVIVOR 4 BIOHAZARD HEROES NEVER DIE scenario draft which is publicly available)



http://i.imgur.com/gFv1J.png - Baker FAX correspondence (UMBRELLA)
http://i.imgur.com/VFuVR.png - Copy ~ UMBRELLA site

Finally got through this, great stuff as usual. Interesting to finally read some more on the dissolve.

Kind of surprised by this. I know he wanted more power, but I didn't think he wanted Umbrella taken down as such. Then again he was working for another Corporation so that isn't so out of the blue. Could've used Umbrella as a scape goat for anything the other company fouled up though.

And secondly, Yama that damn sig gives me the heebie jeebies!!! Just noticed the silly blood covered girl blinks at you....

Good, success!

In regards to Wesker's method of taking down Umbrella, I'd say it's pretty logical. He had access to their entire infrastructure and all of their remaining resources, so he had no use for the company itself. He was going to use the Umbrella Archive (the "remnants of Umbrella" which Leon theorizes in his report at the end of the game) to build up his own force of power, a "new Umbrella". A bankrupt pharmaceutical company with an unrecoverable reputation wouldn't have been of much use to anyone, that's why Ada talks about many figures attempting to replace it.

It's one part of the storyline that needs a little more fleshed out. Alongside the rival company and Ada's organization.

Bumping for good reason, I finally found the source Archives got the Konzern part from. It's from the KEYWORD section in the REmake Kaitai Shinsho guidebook. Specifically this line:



Mystery solved.