BAE Systems to buy UDI

BAE Systems’ wholly-owned

subsidiary,

is proposing to acquire

for $4,192 million, while US-based Rockwell Collins is to buy the German avionics outfit Teldix from Northrop Grumman for $94 million.

If the BAE deal goes through, UDI, together with BAE Systems' existing UK and Swedish land systems businesses, will form part of a newly created global land systems business, which will be headquartered and led in the US, as part of BAE Systems North America.

UDI, headquartered in Arlington, VA, is a leading US defence company which generated annual sales in 2004 of $2,292 million. The company, which employs approximately 8,000 people in 25 locations in the US and Sweden, designs, develops and produces combat vehicles, artillery systems, naval guns, missile launchers and precision munitions and provides non-nuclear ship repair, modernisation and conversion to the US Navy and other US Government agencies.