The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company

Is Goodyear publicly traded?

Yes. The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company trades on Nasdaq under the ticker GT. It has been a public company for well over a century and is headquartered in Akron, Ohio.

Who owns Goodyear?

Public shareholders own Goodyear; no family or parent company controls it. The largest shareholders are institutional investors, with Elliott Management having played an influential role in shaping the Goodyear Forward transformation plan.

Does Goodyear still own Dunlop?

No. In May 2025 Goodyear completed the sale of the Dunlop brand rights in Europe, North America, and Oceania to Sumitomo Rubber Industries for $526 million, plus $209 million in transition support and inventory payments. Dunlop is now controlled by Sumitomo.

What tire brands does Goodyear own?

Following the Dunlop sale, Goodyear's principal brands are Goodyear at the premium tier, Cooper in the mid-tier (acquired 2021), and Kelly plus regional names like Sava, Fulda, and Debica in the value segment.

What is Goodyear Forward?

Goodyear Forward is the transformation plan launched in late 2023 under activist pressure, targeting cost reduction, margin expansion, and $2 billion of asset sales. It completed at the end of 2025 having delivered a $1.5 billion benefit run-rate and $2.3 billion of proceeds, both above target.

Frank Seiberling founded the company in 1898 in Akron, Ohio, naming it for Charles Goodyear, the inventor of rubber vulcanization, to whom the founders had no relation. Starting with bicycle and carriage tires, Goodyear rode the automobile boom to become the world's largest tire company by 1916, a claim it has repeated for most of its history.

The twentieth century made Goodyear a diversified industrial name: blimps for advertising starting in 1925, tires on the Apollo lunar missions, aviation products, and the all-season Aquatred tire that revived the brand in the 1990s. Along the way it survived a 1986 takeover attempt by financier James Goldsmith, which forced the sale of non-tire businesses and a debt-laden restructuring that shaped its conservative posture for decades.

Two strategic pivots define the modern era. In 2021 Goodyear acquired Cooper Tire and Rubber for approximately $2.5 billion, combining the second and third largest U.S.-based tire makers and doubling down on the North American light truck and SUV market. Then in late 2023, under pressure from activist investor Elliott Management, the board launched Goodyear Forward, a transformation plan targeting more than $1 billion of annual benefit, $2 billion of asset sales, and margin recovery.

Mark Stewart, a former Stellantis executive, became President and CEO in January 2024, replacing longtime chief Rich Kramer. He inherited the plan mid-flight and accelerated it: the chemical business went to private equity, the OTR business went to Yokohama, and in May 2025 the Dunlop brand rights in Europe, North America, and Oceania went to Sumitomo Rubber for $526 million plus transition and inventory payments. Fiscal 2025 closed with $18.3 billion of net sales, a GAAP net loss of $1.7 billion driven by a deferred tax valuation allowance and a goodwill impairment, and adjusted net income of $136 million as Goodyear Forward officially completed above target.

Goodyear publishes an annual sustainability report with targets covering renewable materials, emissions, and end-of-life tire management. Its notable product initiative is a demonstration tire line made with up to 70% sustainable materials, including soybean oil and rice husk ash silica, and the company has committed to introducing a 100% sustainable-material tire. Operational targets include renewable electricity at manufacturing sites and reduced solvent emissions.

On the social side, Goodyear runs a large unionized workforce under United Steelworkers and international union agreements, and its commercial retreading business is itself a circular-economy operation that extends truck tire life through recapping. The company is not a certified B Corporation.

Goodyear has appeared on Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies list in the motor vehicle parts category and has received J.D. Power recognition for original equipment tire satisfaction. Its aviation products hold long-standing OEM certifications, and the Goodyear blimp remains one of the most recognizable corporate icons in the United States, inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as an honorary member in 2019.

The most significant product controversy in recent history involved the G159 commercial truck tire, which was linked to motorhome crashes and deaths in litigation spanning the 2010s and early 2020s; Goodyear fought production of internal test data for years before a judge ordered disclosure, and NHTSA declined to order a recall after Goodyear argued the tires were misused on RVs. The case produced sustained critical coverage.

On the compliance side, Goodyear paid $16 million in 2015 to settle SEC charges that its Angolan and Kenyan subsidiaries paid bribes, violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The company has also faced worker safety scrutiny at plants and the standard round of NHTSA product recalls that every major tiremaker carries. More recently, 2025 layoffs at the Findlay, Ohio tire plant drew local criticism even as the company argued the restructuring was required for competitiveness.