Westinghouse Electric Corp, Pittsburgh is impatient to get out of the boring old electronics business to concentrate on the far sexier fun and games brought on board by its CBS Inc acquisition, and yesterday it announced that it had managed to offload its its defence electronics unit onto the newly-formed Northrop Grumman Corp for a spicy $3,600m. Westinghouse took on heavy debt to finance its $5,400m acquisition of CBS, will be able to bank $3,000m in cash for the unit to help pay down the debt; Northrop also agreed to assume about $600m in pension and other post-retirement liabilities associated with the current employees of the business. Following the divestitures, broadcasting will account for 45% of its $10,000m or so sales and nearly two thirds of its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation. The remaining industrial portfolio includes power generation, energy systems, transport refrigeration equipment, government and environmental services and several commercial electronics businesses in residential security and telecommunications markets. In 1994, the defence group earned operating profits of $176m before special charges, on sales of $2,500m, Westinghouse said.
