U.S. sues to block Lockheed Martin bid for Aerojet

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration is suing to block Lockheed Martin Corp.’s $4.4 billion bid for Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, saying it would limit competition and drive up prices for components used in missiles that Lockheed and other defense contractors build for the Pentagon.

The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday that Aerojet is the last independent U.S. supplier of some key missile parts, and the acquisition would let Lockheed cut off supply to rivals.

Lockheed said it was reviewing the lawsuit but had no further immediate comment.

Lockheed’s missile competitors include Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman and Boeing.

The weapons they supply to the Pentagon depend on rocket motors built by Aerojet, the commission said.

The motors go into space rockets and missiles such as hypersonic weapons for the Pentagon.

“Without competitive pressure, Lockheed can jack up the price the U.S. government has to pay, while delivering lower quality and less innovation,” said Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s competition bureau. “We cannot afford to allow further concentration in markets critical to our national security and defense.”

Lockheed, based in Bethesda, Maryland, announced the deal for Aerojet in December 2020, shortly before the end of the Trump administration.

The FTC said it reviewed the Pentagon’s assessment as part of its review of the deal before filing the lawsuit.

GM to invest $7B to convert plant for electric pickups

LANSING, Mich. – General Motors is making the largest investment in company history in its home state of Michigan, announcing plans to spend nearly $7 billion to convert a factory to make electric pickup trucks and to build a new battery cell plant.

The moves, announced Tuesday in the state capital of Lansing, will create up to 4,000 jobs and keep another 1,000 already employed at an underutilized assembly plant north of Detroit.

The automaker plans to spend up to $4 billion converting and expanding its Orion Township assembly factory to make electric pickups and $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion building a third U.S. battery cell plant with a joint-venture partner in Lansing.

GM CEO Mary Barra said the investment would make Michigan “the epicenter of the electric vehicle industry.”

The state’s economic development board on Tuesday approved $824 million in incentives and assistance for Detroit-based GM.

The package was unveiled and authorized by the Michigan Strategic Fund Board.

It includes a $600 million grant to GM and Ultium Cells, the venture between the carmaker and LG Energy Solution, and a $158 million tax break for Ultium.The board also approved $66.1 million to help a local electric utility and township upgrade infrastructure at the battery factory site.

Both factories are scheduled to start producing in about two years, as GM rolls the dice on whether Americans will be willing to convert from internal combustion engines to battery power.

The Orion plant will join GM’s “Factory Zero” facility in Detroit in building new electric Chevrolet Silverados and GMC Sierra pickups.

When both plants are making trucks on three shifts, GM will have the ability to build 600,000 electric pickup trucks per year, Barra said.

American Airlines moves ahead in arrival rankings

American Airlines moved ahead of several of its major competitors in on-time arrival rankings in 2021, despite a year of turbulence as the Fort Worth-based carrier and the rest of the aviation industry tried to find smoother skies in the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time, Dallas-based Southwest Airlines fell below its major competitors at American, United and Delta as it failed to build on several years of improving performance, according to 2021 Punctuality League report from global aviation data company OAG.

“Generally, performance improved across all carriers and we can all sit here and say it was because there were fewer flights,” OAG senior analyst John Grant said. “But they still had the challenges of not having enough available people and bringing back their networks from 2020.”

American ranked third among major U.S. carriers in the report, behind perennial top performers Hawaiian Airlines and Delta Air Lines with 85.1% of flights landing on time.

Southwest Airlines ranked six out of the country’s 10 biggest carriers, just behind United and Alaska with 81.2% of flights landing on time.

It was American’s best on-time performance since at least 2012, and far better than recent years, excluding the pandemic year of 2020 when global air traffic fell by nearly two-thirds from the year before.

It was particularly better than 2018 and 2019, when American struggled with a contract dispute with mechanics and then the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max.

From wire reports