The Financial Times story that a plan by Plessey Co Plc to launch a bid for Harris Corp was ditched after the US Department of Defense insisted on onerous quarantine safeguards for sensitive projects under way at Harris Corp puts the spotlight on both companies: for Plessey, the acquisition would have been very positive, but, more im-portantly, underlines the scale of the company’s ambitions in the wake of the vetoed bid from GEC; in the case of Harris, it seems to put the company, widely regarded as compet-ent in its many fields but too small in any of them to make a real impact, firmly into takeover play; the FT story however fails to answer two key questions – when did this happen, and was Harris prepared to go quietly? Neither firm is saying anything about the affair or acknowledging it ever happened.
