With all of our electronics majors on the lookout for suitable defence acquisitions, it would have been surprising if at least part of self-destructing Singer Co hadn’t ended up with a UK company, and Plessey Co Plc yesterday announced that it was plunging into avionics in a big was with agreement to buy Singer’s Electronic Systems Division for $310m. The Singer division, based in Montford, New Jersey, employs 3,400 people and looks to do $300m sales this year, a giant leap from the $166m it did last year. The company’s key contract is for the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System designed to give pilots secure, jam-resistant access to tactical data on the location and nature of hostile forces. Singer has had $500m in development contracts on the project, which is about to go into production, and will find its way into NATO and French as well as US aircraft. That accounts for about half the unit’s $350m order book, another third being tactical direction and position systems for missiles, the rest being ruggedised airborne computers. The acquisition will take Plessey’s US defence business to about $450m a year. Plessey is paying for the $145m asset value in dollars, and for the goodwill – the difference between the price paid and the net asset value – in sterling. It says it can find the UKP182m total needed from its cash reserves and existing borrowing facilities, and looks for completion within 60 days provided the Department of Defense approves – which is by no means a certainty.
