08 Jan 13. Aircraft carriers give lift to business. On a windswept patch of land a half-hour drive from Edinburgh, one of Europe’s biggest and most intricate manufacturing projects is taking shape. A Chinese-built gantry crane – the dimensions of which dwarf London’s Tower Bridge – is assembling the huge steel blocks that are the main parts of two aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy. The first of the vessels – HMS Queen Elizabeth – is about half way through its construction at the dry dock in Rosyth on the Firth of Forth. The ship’s bridge – its operational nerve centre – is scheduled for fitting next month. Seven hundred companies are participating in the programme – 90 per cent of them in the UK – and 10,000 jobs are directly involved, a quarter of them engineers. The companies range from big groups such as BAE Systems, the UK’s biggest defence supplier, to small concerns employing a handful of people. Analysts and business leaders believe the carriers provide a model for how big government-backed engineering projects can help drive economic recovery, not only through direct stimulus, but by exposing small and medium-sized companies to new skills and technology.
“When you measure the economic impact over the longer term of schemes such as [the aircraft carriers] you often find the impact on boosting gross domestic product in other areas of the economy is at least as big as the costs of the programme itself,” says Sam Moore, director at the Oxford Economics consultancy. (Source: FT.com)

08 Jan 13. GenCorp Plans to Sell Assets to Facilitate Rocketdyne Acquisition. GenCorp Inc. (GY) plans to sell part of its business in order to facilitate its planned acquisition of United Technologies Corp.’s (UTX) Rocketdyne business amid a continuing U.S. antitrust review. The maker of aerospace and defense products said Tuesday that the Federal Trade Commission has limited the scope of its investigation into the deal, focusing on the two companies’ liquid divert and attitude control systems, or LDACS, businesses. (Source: Glstrade.com/WSJ)

07 Jan 13. Oshkosh Corporation (OSK), announced that its Board of Directors approved, and the Company entered into, an amendment to the Company’s shareholder rights agreement (the “Rights Plan”) accelerating the expiration date of the Rights Plan to January 7, 2013 from October 25, 2013. Accordingly, as of 5:00 p.m., New York time, January 7, 2013, the rights issued pursuant to the Rights Plan will expire and will no longer be outstanding, and the Rights Plan will terminate as of that time. (Source: Yahoo!/BUSINESS WIRE)

07 Jan 13. Lockheed Martin Canada Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT), announced that it has entered into an agreement to purchase certain assets of the engine maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) business of Aveos Fleet Performance, Inc., located in Montreal, Canada. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed and are not material to Lockheed Martin. The closing of the transaction is subject to customary conditions.
“This acquisition is consistent with our strategy of acquiring capabilities that enhance our ability to expand into attractive adjacent market opportunities,” said Lockheed Martin CEO and President Marillyn Hewson. “We look forward to expanding our corporation’s presence in Canada, and plan to begin engine MRO operations for commercial and military customers later this year.”
The engine MRO assets provide capabilities to perform a complete range of services on the CF34 and CFM56 engine families, which include engines that power the regional Embraer and Canadian RJ jets and the Airbus 320 family, respectively. The facility will be named Kelly Aviation Center Montreal, a Lockheed Martin Canada company, and become part of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics’ engine MRO line of business, which includes Kelly Aviation Center, a Lockheed Martin affiliate based in San Antonio, Texas.
(Source: Yahoo!/PRNewswire)

10 Jan 13. COM DEV Internatio