Much of the old Loral Corp is being recreated as a stand-alone company under former Loral chief Frank Lanza, as Lockheed Martin Corp allows 10 non-core technology units to go into a new private company headed called L3 Communications Holdings Inc. The deal was first announced at the beginning of February (CI No 3,093) and has just been completed. Lanza had been the long-time president of Loral and is thought to have run into a culture clash at the more bureaucratic Lockheed Martin, which bought Loral for $9.1bn one year ago and appointed former Loral president Lanza executive vice-president. Lanza will serve as chairman and chief executive of the new enterprise, and Lockheed Martin will get about $525m for a 65% stake in the new L3 – it is retaining 35%. Of the 10 units, nine came from Loral rather than either Lockheed or Martin Marietta, the other main constituents of Lockheed Martin. The offer services and equipment in such fields as intelligence-gathering, image processing, data recording, telemetry and electronic counter-measures. Lehman Brothers Capital Partners III will own 50% of the new company, Lockheed Martin 35%, and Lanza and his management team will own the remaining 15%.
