MasTec

Early 1900s: Beginning as Burnup & Sims

The company was formed by the merger of two separate companies: Burnup & Sims and Church & Tower. Burnup & Sims was the oldest of the two founding companies and was founded in 1929 by two unemployed carpenters, Russell Burnup and Riley V. Sims, to provide design, construction, and maintenance services to the telephone and utilities industries. During the years of the Great Depression, the two established an office in West Palm Beach, Florida, and by 1936, had a small fleet of trucks and staff. The company’s first telecommunications projects were undertaken the following year at Cape Canaveral, where it was responsible for burying 85 miles of cable.B&S contributed to national defense during World War II by building airfields and telephone systems. After the war, the company became involved in the laying of underwater cable from Florida to Puerto Rico, and from there to Barbados, for such companies as AT&T and General Telephone. Projects then took on a greater geographical scope, as B&S established underground telecommunications systems and built radio towers in Costa Rica, Barbados, Trinidad-Tobago, and Venezuela.

1960s: Church & Tower is formed

Founded in Cuba, Church & Tower incorporated in Miami, Florida in 1968 to construct and service telephone networks in Puerto Rico and Miami. When it overextended itself in Puerto Rico and could not build the telephone-infrastructure networks needed in Miami, the company’s owner asked his friend, Cuban immigrant Jorge Mas Canosa, to help save the business. In exchange for half ownership of CTF, Mas Canosa began to manage the company in 1969.

Eager to improve the business, Mas Canosa climbed down into ditches, manholes, and trenches to observe workers’ construction methods. He listened to advice from telephone-companies and government inspectors; he studied books about the most efficient and newest construction methods. BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. awarded Church & Tower a long-term contract for projects in the greater Miami and Fort Lauderdale areas. By 1971, Mas Canosa had turned the failing company around; he then borrowed $50,000 and bought the remaining shares of the firm.

1990s: Founding of MasTec

On March 11, 1994, Church & Tower Group acquired 65 percent of the outstanding common stock of publicly traded Burnup & Sims, Inc. The name of Burnup & Sims was changed to MasTec, Inc., Jorge Mas Canosa became MasTec’s chairman and his son, Jorge Mas, was named president and chief executive officer. Mastec was now regarded as a “minority business enterprise,” publicly traded on NASDAQ under the symbol MTZ.

21st century

In April 2007, Jose Mas became CEO of MasTec. MasTec, Inc. earned total revenues of $3B in 2011 and, in addition to the MasTec brand, works under the following brand names: Wanzek, Power Partners, Precision Pipeline, Pumpco, nsoro, Advanced Technologies, ADVent, EC Source, Fabcor, Cam Communications, 3 PhaseLine, Optima Network Services, and Globetec.