20 novembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

British government signals support for Cobham takeover by private equity firm Advent

By: Andrew Chuter

LONDON — The British government has signaled it will give the green light to a £4 billion (U.S. $5 billion) takeover that would see local defense contractor Cobham acquired by a U.S.-based private equity company.

Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom announced Nov. 19 that she was “minded to accept” the proposed takeover but would put out for public consultation assurances given by Advent International regarding British security concerns before making a final call.

Advent moved to buy Cobham in July securing the approval of 93 percent of shareholders in the Wimborne, southwest England-based contractor best known for its world leading role of air-to-air refueling technology.

Cobham's annual turnover of £1.86 billion took it to 57th place in the Defense News Top 100 companies listing earlier this year.

Over 50 percent of its revenues were generated in the United States where the company has substantial manufacturing facilities.

The British government intervened in the takeover in September following criticism led by Nadine Cobham, whose father-in-law formed the company in 1935. Members of Parliament also raised security concerns over the sale.

The government has spent the last few weeks reviewing the proposed acquisition ahead of Leadsom outlining the government's current position.

"Following my update to Parliament on 5. November, I have now reviewed further national security advice from the Ministry of Defence and met with both Cobham and Advent, who have offered legally binding undertakings designed to mitigate national security concerns, which I am minded to accept.”

"They will now be considered by a public consultation, and I will provide a further update once that process has concluded,” said Leadsom.

The consultation closes Dec. 17 – five days after the general election.

The assurances include Advent giving the MoD prior notice of plans to sell off parts or all of Cobham, agreeing to honor the terms of existing contracts. In addition, the new owners would have to ensure existing security arrangements are strengthened and maintain the ability to supply key services for five years.

Nadine Cobham has previously said assurances were not worth the paper they were written on.

Alex Ashbourne-Walmsley, a defense consultant at ASC here in London, said she thought Leadsom had taken the right decision on the Cobham sale.

“It's advisable for the government to respect the clear instructions of the Cobham shareholders. It is sensible, however, for government to build in conditions regarding any future sale of parts of the business. Private equity houses, unlike traditional industrial corporations, tend to take the shorter-term, more profit-driven view of disposal of their acquisitions, rather than considering matters such as national security of supply and the wider strategic interest,” she said.

Criticism over the proposed acquisition of an important part of the British defense industry follows the controversial takeover last year of GKN by Melrose, another private equity company.

Despite the furore over the Cobham sale the Financial Times said today the assurances sought by the government from Advent were weaker than those demanded to wave the GKN deal through.

https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2019/11/19/british-government-signals-support-for-cobham-takeover-by-private-equity-firm-advent

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  • Defense Secretary Mark Esper on how the Navy can get to 355 ships

    10 février 2020 | International, Naval

    Defense Secretary Mark Esper on how the Navy can get to 355 ships

    By: Aaron Mehta and David B. Larter WASHINGTON — Despite expected cuts to shipbuilding programs in the fiscal year 2021 budget request, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is committed to a bigger, but much lighter, naval force, he said in an exclusive interview with Defense News. In the wake of reports that the Navy may cut shipbuilding in its upcoming budget request, Esper said he is “fully committed” to building a fleet of 355 ships or larger. But to get there, the Navy is going to have to fundamentally reshape itself around smaller ships that can be more quickly bought than the large, exquisite designs the service now relies on — a shift that could have big implications for both the industrial base and the carrier force. Such a plan would mark a departure from the current Navy force structure assessment that calls for twice the number of larger ships over small surface combatants: 104 large, 52 small. But inverting that structure is essential to building a bigger, more deadly fleet that lives within the constraints of future budgets that the Pentagon expects to remain largely flat, Esper said. To get there, the Navy must push hard on fielding lightly manned ships, Esper said, an effort that has been a major focus of Naval Sea Systems Command's Unmanned Maritime Systems Program Office in recent years. The first step, though, is getting through the process of figuring out what the fleet should look like. “What we have to tease out is, what does that future fleet look like?” Esper said. “I think one of the ways you get there quickly is moving toward lightly manned [ships], which over time can be unmanned. “We can go with lightly manned ships, get them out there. You can build them so they're optionally manned and then, depending on the scenario or the technology, at some point in time they can go unmanned. “To me that's where we need to push. We need to push much more aggressively. That would allow us to get our numbers up quickly, and I believe that we can get to 355, if not higher, by 2030.” Cuts versus growth In addition to the reported cut of a Virginia-class submarine out of the FY21 budget, it is expected that other cuts may be coming in the short term for the Navy. Late last year, a memo from the White House's Office of Management and Budget to the Defense Department, obtained by Defense News, outlined a series of cuts over the next five years that OMB contends would shrink the size of the fleet. The cuts outlined in the OMB memo included cutting a submarine, a next-generation frigate and a Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer from the 2021 budget. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the Navy intends to request eight ships in its 2021 budget, which would be four fewer than was requested in 2020, but that the budget restored the missing Arleigh Burke. The Navy contends that even with the cuts, the service is still on a path to growth. In a recent interview with Defense News, acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly said the budget documents that leaked were not final. Esper noted that his stamp on the 2021 budget was relatively limited, given he took office in August, at which point most of the service budget work had already been completed. “The services have already developed their budgets at that point,” Esper said. “So now it's at OSD level. As you know, at this point I was able to go through budgets, free up money. I was able to move some money around, but, to me, my big impact will be on the upcoming budget.” Lighter Navy Esper's backing of a larger Navy built on the backs of lightly or optionally manned ships echoes calls by Modly to get to a fleet of 355 ships in the next 10 years, and is in line with recent statement by the Navy's top officer, Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday. At the USNI Defense Forum in December, Gilday said the Navy needed to change the way it built its ships. “I know that the future fleet has to include a mix of unmanned,” Gilday said. “We can't continue to wrap $2 billion ships around 96 missile tubes in the numbers we need to fight in a distributed way, against a potential adversary that is producing capability and platforms at a very high rate of speed. We have to change the way we are thinking.” Congress, however, has been reluctant to back the push for more unmanned ships, believing that the Navy hasn't done enough work on how the concept of operations would work or how they'd support them. Esper said his office would be taking a leading role in bringing Congress to the table on a new fleet design. “DoD will run this ... I want to invite some of our congressional interested parties in, certainly from the defense committees, to observe the process and watch what we're doing and how we're going about it,” Esper said. “That's part of what I want to do, is to invite folks in.” Retired Navy and defense officials will also be involved in the planning and outreach process to make sure the department is on the right track, Esper continued. “We talk about the gray beards as validators, folks who make sure that nobody's putting their finger on the scale, that we've considered all factors,” Esper said. “I want it to be that type of process, if we can get there.” Expanding the fleet with more small, lightly manned ships will also increase opportunities for smaller shipyards to enter the shipbuilding industrial base, a proposal that may be attractive for congressional members in an election year. The secretary stressed that “the United States must have an expanded and healthy industrial base with modern shipyards” to make such a reality happen, adding that “I think we can actually expand the number of shipyards in the United States and highly skilled workers [as well] around the country to ensure adequate capacity.” In terms of planning, Esper said the Pentagon's Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE), along with the Navy, will be conducting a series of war games and exercises in the coming months in order to figure out the way forward. But any major decisions will be based around the completion of a new joint war plan for the whole department, which the secretary said should be finished this summer. “I think once we go through this process with the future fleet — that'll really be the new foundation, the guiding post,” Esper said. “It'll give us the general direction we need to go, and I think that'll be a big game changer in terms of future fleet, for structure, for the Navy and Marine Corps team.” The Carrier Question As the Defense Department looks to craft a lighter Navy, the obvious question is: What will become of the Navy's 11 super carriers? Defense Department officials such as Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin have publicly questioned whether ground-based hypersonic missiles might more effectively deter China than an aircraft carrier that he believes is increasingly vulnerable. Esper said he's not sure what the ultimate answer is on aircraft carriers – but rejected the idea there is a binary choice to be had. “This discussion often comes down to a binary: Is it zero or 12?” Esper said. “First of all, I don't know. I think carriers are very important. I think they demonstrate American power, American prestige. They get people's attention. They are a great deterrent. They give us great capability.” The Navy may have to think about new ways of building carriers, however, if they are going to stay relevant in the future, Esper said. As an example, he pointed to what Japan is doing with its F-35B jump-jet models, which have been tested for use on lighter ships previously designed for use with helicopters. “There are various ways to do carriers,” Esper said. “So, we can talk numbers or we can talk the sizes of carriers, right? There's been discussion in the past about: do you keep building big carriers or do you go to smaller carriers, Lightning carriers? Acting Secretary Modly and I have talked about that. “I think this gets into the future fleet designs we look at. That will be one element that we look at.” https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2020/02/09/defense-secretary-mark-esper-on-how-the-navy-can-get-to-355-ships

  • Contract Awards by US Department of Defense – October 02, 2020

    5 octobre 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité, Autre défense

    Contract Awards by US Department of Defense – October 02, 2020

    NAVY Northrop Grumman Systems Corp., Mission Systems Sector, Linthicum Heights, Maryland, was awarded a $100,798,804 fixed-price-incentive-fee and firm-fixed-price contract for follow-on production of Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program Block 3 electronic attack systems and hardware design modifications required for aircraft carrier and amphibious assault ship installation. This contract includes options, which if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $1,164,529,315. Work will be performed in Baltimore, Maryland (55%); Tampa, Florida (6%); Andover, Massachusetts (5%); Chelmsford, Massachusetts (4%); Rochester, New York (3%); San Diego, California (3%); Los Angeles, California (2%); Winona, Minnesota (2%); Stafford Springs, Connecticut (2%); Glendale, Arizona (1%); Nashua, New Hampshire (1%); Elk Grove Village, Illinois (1%); White Marsh, Maryland (1%); Tucson, Arizona (1%); Chandler, Arizona (1%); Washington, North Carolina (1%); Woodridge, Illinois (1%); Richardson, Texas (1%); Minneapolis, Minnesota (1%); El Cajon, California (1%); Hiawatha, Iowa (1%); Littleton, Colorado (1%); Glendale, California (1%); and miscellaneous locations - each less than 1% (4%), and is expected to be completed by May 2023. If all options are exercised, work will continue through September 2026. Fiscal 2019 other procurement (Navy) (67%); and fiscal 2020 other procurement (Navy) (33%) funding in the amount of $100,798,804 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured via the Federal Business Opportunities website with one offer received. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity (N00024-20-C-5519). (Awarded Sept. 30, 2020) EFW Inc., Fort Worth, Texas, is awarded a $35,801,006 five-year requirements type, firm-fixed-priced contract for repair of line-replaceable units in support of the V-22 aircraft. This is a five-year contract with no option periods. Work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas (50%); and Talladega, Alabama (50%). Work is expected to be completed by October 2025. Annual working capital funds (Navy) will be used and funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. No funds will be obligated at the time of award. One company was solicited for this sole-sourced requirement under authority 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(1), with one offer received. The Naval Supply Systems Command, Weapon Systems Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the contracting activity (N00383-20-D-Y001). BAE Systems Land & Armaments L.P., Minneapolis, Minnesota, was awarded a $17,290,912 firm-fixed-price contract for the production of two 57mm MK 110 Mod 0 gun mounts and associated hardware. Work will be performed in Karlskoga, Sweden (93%); and Louisville, Kentucky (7%), and is expected to be completed by May 2023. Fiscal 2018 weapons procurement (Navy); and fiscal 2020 weapons procurement (Navy) funding in the amount of $17,290,912 will be obligated at time of award and $249,448 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. In accordance with 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(1), this contract was not competitively procured; only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity (N00024-20-C-5300). (Awarded Sept. 30, 2020) Peraton Inc., Herndon, Virginia, is awarded a $13,891,979 cost-plus-fixed-fee, level of effort contract (N00030-21-C-0016) for program support services for the Navy's strategic weapons systems reentry subsystem. Work will be performed in Colorado Springs, Colorado (75%); Washington, D.C. (15%); Albuquerque, New Mexico (8%); Cape Canaveral, Florida (1%); and Omaha, Nebraska (1%). Work is expected to be completed by March 30, 2026. Contract will be awarded subject to the availability of funds. No funds will be obligated at the time of award. Once funding becomes available, contract will be funded as follows: fiscal 2021 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $7,214,639; and fiscal 2021 operations and maintenance (Navy) funds in the amount of $6,677,340, which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract is being awarded to the contractor on a sole-source basis under 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(1) and was previously synopsized on the Beta.sam.gov (formally Federal Business Opportunities) website. Strategic Systems Programs, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity. BAE Systems Land & Armaments L.P., Minneapolis, Minnesota, was awarded an $8,934,292 cost-plus-fixed-fee and firm-fixed-price order under previously awarded blanket ordering agreement N00024-19-G-5306 for engineering services, open, inspect and repair services and spare and component parts in support of the MK 110 MOD 0 gun mount. This order includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $23,400,781. Work will be performed in Louisville, Kentucky (50%); and Karlskoga, Sweden (50%), and is expected to be completed by December 2022. Fiscal 2020 weapons procurement (Navy) (92%); and fiscal 2018 weapons procurement (Navy) (8%) funding in the amount of $6,128,002 will be obligated at time of award, of which $495,948 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This order was not competitively procured in accordance with 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(1); only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity (N00024-20-F-5301). (Awarded Sept. 30, 2020) ARMY AstraZeneca, Gaithersburg, Maryland, was awarded a $60,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract to manufacture AZD7442, a combination antibody product intended to prevent or treat clinical effects of SARS-CoV-2, for a minimum of 100,000 treatment courses. Work will be performed in Gaithersburg, Maryland, with an estimated completion date of June 30, 2021. Fiscal 2020 Army general funds in the amount of $30,000,000 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is the contracting activity (W911QY-20-C-0119). (Awarded Sept. 30, 2020) CORRECTION: The contract announced on Sept. 28, 2020, for Tatum Excavating Co. Inc., Texarkana, Texas (W9126G-20-F-0768), for $10,000,000, was announced with an incorrect award date. The correct award date is Sept. 29, 2020. CORRECTION: The contract announced on Sept. 29, 2020, for University of South Dakota, Vermillion, South Dakota (W9128F-20-D-0059), for $12,800,000, was announced with an incorrect awardee. The correct awardee is South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota. MISSILE DEFENSE AGENCY Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems, Moorestown, New Jersey, has been awarded a $35,582,832 sole-source, hybrid (cost-plus-fixed-fee, firm-fixed-price) contract (HQ0851-21-C-0001) under Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Case JA-P-NCO to the government of Japan. Under this contract, Lockheed Martin will perform Aegis FMS Baseline J7.B development and SPY-7(V) 1 radar production, integration and test planning support. The work will be performed in Moorestown, New Jersey. The period of performance is from Oct. 2, 2020, through July 31, 2021. Funds from the government of Japan in the amount of $35,582,832 are being obligated at the time of award. The Missile Defense Agency, Dahlgren, Virginia, is the contracting activity (HQ0851-21-C-0001). AIR FORCE Wolverine Supply Inc., Wasilla, Alaska, has been awarded an $8,649,500 firm-fixed-price contract for repair of the Blackstart Generator. This contract provides for repair of the Blackstart Generator at the Eielson Air Force Base central heat and power plant. Work will be performed at Eielson AFB, Alaska, and is expected to be complete by Sept. 22, 2022. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition and four offers were received. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the full amount are being obligated at the time of award. The 354th Contracting Squadron, Eielson AFB, Alaska, is the contracting activity (FA500420C0015). (Awarded Sept. 30, 2020) * Small business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2370617/source/GovDelivery/

  • Hyundai Rotem readies Multipurpose Unmanned Ground Vehicle for delivery

    1 décembre 2020 | International, Terrestre

    Hyundai Rotem readies Multipurpose Unmanned Ground Vehicle for delivery

    by Dae Young Kim South Korean defence and engineering prime Hyundai Rotem has been selected as the supplier of Multipurpose Unmanned Ground Vehicles (MUGVs) to the Republic of Korea Armed Forces. Hyundai Rotem announced on 24 November that it had won a contract from the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) to supply two MUGVs within six months under an accelerated acquisition scheme that aims to introduce new capabilities to the military. The company will also provide the associated support for the two vehicles. MUGVs are two-tonne multirole platforms that can be fitted with a range of mission equipment depending on the user's requirements. The type can be used to perform combat reconnaissance in heavily contested battlefield environments to improve the firepower and survivability of troops. The vehicle can also be used for supporting roles such as ammunition and expendable resupply, and casualty evacuation. The MUGV will be derived from Hyundai Rotem's HR-Sherpa UGV, a 6×6 multirole dual-use platform that is 2.7 m in length, 1.7 m in width, and 0.9 m in height. It weighs 1.6 tonnes in its baseline configuration, and up to two tonnes when fully loaded. The company will also supply an in-house remote-control weapon system (RCWS) and plans to arm it with a 5.56 mm light machine gun. The battery powered UGV is equipped with airless tyre technology and can turn on its axis. It is also equipped with a water-cooled battery and an integrated heat management system that supports long-distance driving in all-weather operations, and offers a claimed endurance of six hours when cruising at 5 km/h. It can also attain road and cross-country speeds of up to 40 km/h and 10 km/h, respectively. https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/hyundai-rotem-readies-multipurpose-unmanned-ground-vehicle-for-delivery

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