IT TOOK more than three years, but on February 24th Finmeccanica, Italy’s state-controlled aerospace and defence group, said it had found a buyer for its rail businesses. Hitachi, a Japanese conglomerate, will pay €773m ($876m) for Finmeccanica’s 40% stake in Ansaldo STS, a railway-signalling company listed on Milan’s stock exchange, and €36m for AnsaldoBreda, a trainmaker (and lossmaker) fully owned by Finmeccanica.
The deal will make Hitachi the fourth-biggest company in the rail-equipment business worldwide, behind Bombardier of Canada, Siemens of Germany and Alstom of France. For Finmeccanica it marks an important step in the industrial plan it announced in January, following the appointment last year of a new chief executive, Mauro Moretti.
Saddled with debt and reeling from a series of corruption scandals, the Italian industrial giant has been seeking to get out of activities it now sees as non-core, to cut its debts and improve its cashflow. It is Europe’s third-biggest military supplier (after BAE Systems of Britain and Airbus of France). Half its profits come from AgustaWestland, a world leader in helicopters, but the group is also into defence electronics, missiles and civil-aircraft parts. At the plan’s unveiling last month, Mr Moretti said Finmeccanica was spread too thin and was wasting money where it could not win: of the 18 business...
from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1Bh7QZY
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