Raytheon Deal Upends the Aerospace Playing Field
United Technologies' latest megamerger should put GE, Honeywell and Boeing on notice.
Make way for a new giant in aerospace and defense.
Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
No aerospace and defense company has bet bigger on the benefits of scale than United Technologies Corp. Its latest megadeal with Raytheon Co. should be a wake-up call to its rivals.
United Technologies is merging with Raytheon in an all-stock transaction that will create a behemoth with about $75 billion in sales spanning jet engines, airplane seats, missile-defense systems and radar technologies. There have been only four aerospace and defense deals valued at more than $10 billion in the past decade, and United Technologies now accounts for three of them. As for the others, Boeing Co. spent more on publicly disclosed aerospace M&A over that period than either General Electric Co. or Honeywell International Inc., reflecting a push to bring more of its supply-chain in house.