United Technologies Plans July Closing for Goodrich Purchase

United Technologies Corp. (UTX) expects to complete its $16.5 billion acquisition of Goodrich Corp. (GR) by mid- to-late July even with European Union regulators extending their antitrust review of the transaction.

The probe’s deadline was pushed back by 15 working days to Aug. 31 with the agreement of both companies, the European Commission said in a May 16 statement. The Goodrich acquisition, the largest by United Technologies, will add the world’s largest maker of aircraft landing gear to brands that include Pratt & Whitney jet engines and Sikorsky helicopters.

“Our confidence is there that we’ve done the right things to wrap this deal up within the window we’ve described,” Louis Chenevert, the chief executive officer of Hartford, Connecticut- based United Technologies, said today at the Electrical Products Group conference in Longboat Key, Florida.

United Technologies expects to reach an agreement in the next month with a buyer for its Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne business, one of the units being sold to help pay for the Goodrich transaction, Chenevert said.

A Rocketdyne deal by mid-June would contribute to $3 billion in projected proceeds from asset sales. The company is also seeking buyers for the Hamilton Sundstrand division’s pump and compressor businesses and its Clipper Windpower unit.

The Hamilton Sundstrand units are attracting “huge interest,” Chenevert said at the conference. A Clipper Windpower sale may occur by the end of this year, he said.

United Technologies climbed 0.9 percent to $74.39 at 12:31 p.m. in New York. The shares advanced 0.8 percent this year through yesterday, compared with a 4.6 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tim Catts in New York at tcatts1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ed Dufner at edufner@bloomberg.net