Siemens is to sell its cordless phone unit – Siemens Home and Office Communication Devices (SHC) – to Arques Industries, a deal that marks the end of the vendor’s 160-year history in telecoms. According to Bloomberg, the unit reported €792 million (US$1.23 billion) in sales last year and employs 2,100 people. Two-thirds of SHC’s sales are generated by gigaset cordless phones while the rest is made up of broadband and home entertainment devices.

Bloomberg notes that Siemens, Europe’s largest engineering company, has spent three years exiting the communications business, with CEO Peter Loescher refocusing the company on energy, healthcare and industry. At the end of July the company’s corporate user-focused business unit, Siemens Enterprise Communications, was divested, whilst the company handed its mobile handset division to Taiwan’s BenQ in 2005. Once a successful handset unit in its own right, BenQ decided to stop funding the division within a year of receiving it from Siemens, forcing it to declare insolvency. Last year Siemens also separated off its operator network equipment business into the succcessful joint venture Nokia Siemens Networks, and in March this year sold its wireless modules business to Joint Operations for Mobile Applications (JOMA), a consortium of investors. In a separate development this week, TIME reported that the supervisory board of Siemens has launched plans to sue 11 former management board executives, including former CEOs Heinrich von Pierer and Klaus Kleinfeld, over alleged supervisory failings linked to a US$2 billion bribes-for-business scandal.