Merger-and-acquisition deals dominated the headlines in the GovCon sector this week, which brought the theme of industry consolidation among some of its notable players back to the forefront.
 On Friday, Harris announced it would make its largest-ever acquisition through amore-than $4 billion cash-and-stock deal to acquire Exelis, a move Harris says would create defense technology maker with more than $8 billion in 2014 revenue.
“We bring together complimentary technologies and capabilities that strengthen our core franchise in space and intelligence, advanced weather systems, air-traffic management and tactical communications,” Harris CEO William Brown said in an investors’ call.
 Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush said in January the Pentagon seems reluctant to support mergers between large-tier contractors but could take a “case-by-case view of competition” on any potential deal between defense companies.
“This is the first major merger among mid-tier defense companies,” Jim McAleese, founder of McAleese & Associates and a Wash100 inductee for 2015, said to Reutersof the Harris-Exelis deal.
Accenture also made waves in the M&A space this week with the announcement that its federal services subsidiary would acquire Agilex in a push to grow digital services offerings in the federal market.
Additionally, the long-awaited merger of Orbital Sciences with ATK’s aerospace and defense groups closed Monday and the newly-formed Orbital ATK started trading on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday.
Subsequently, Executive Mosaic has added Orbital ATK to the list of 30 companies tracked on EM’s GovCon Index, which follows the stock activity of the GovCon sector’s most notable firms.
Shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls also became a member of the index with Orbital ATK. The Potomac Officers Club will turn its attention on March 19 to the cybersecurity arena with “2015 Cyber Security Summit,” a half-day forum for government and business leaders to interact and exchange ideas for how to protect information systems.
Loss of trade secrets and customer information, capabilities of nation-states, public-private partnerships to tackle those issues and U.S. government policies are among several topics slated for discussion at the summit.
Speakers scheduled to appear include (ordered by headshots from left to right): - Joe Demarest, assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division
- Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center
- Phil Lacombe, VP & manager of Parsons’ information systems and security sector
- Tom McMillan, a director at Siemens Government Technologies
- Steve Shirley, executive director of the Defense Cyber Crime Center
- Bobbie Stempfley, acting assistant secretary of DHS’ office of cybersecurity and communications
- Mark Weatherford, former deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity at DHS
Click here to register for this event and learn more about POC’s other upcoming events. THIS WEEK’S TOP NEWS STORIES |
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