ATK

Alliant Techsystems (ATK) will acquire Swales Aerospace, ATK announced April 3.

Swales, based in Beltsville, Md., provides satellite components and subsystems, small spacecraft, and engineering services to NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense and commercial customers. The Swales facility would become the headquarters for the new ATK Space Division within the company’s Mission Systems Group, and be overseen by Swales CEO Mike Cerneck. The unit will inherit the space structures and subsystems operations of ATK’s Space Systems and Sensors Division.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but ATK expects Swales to add more than $100 million to its sales guidance for the 2008 fiscal year, which began April 2. The deal is expected to close within the next 30 days and is subject to review by the U.S. government and approval by Swales shareholders.

Thales, Alcatel

The European Commission (EC) has given the green light to the Thales acquisition of Alcatel’s stakes in Alcatel Alenia Space and Telespazio.

"This merger creates a complex vertical structure in an industry involving highly technical products, but the commission has investigated it thoroughly and is satisfied that the existing strong competition on the markets for telecommunications satellites and subsystems will not be adversely affected," EC Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, said in a statement.

Under the deal, announced in April 2006, Thales will acquire Alcatel’s 67 percent shares in Alcatel Alenia Space and its 33 percent share of Telespazio. Telespazio’s main shareholder is Finmeccanica.

News Corp.

News Corp.’s shareholders approved a plan April 3 to give up the company’s 38.5 percent stake in DirecTV Group Inc. plus $550 million in cash in exchange for Liberty Media Corp. and its 16.3 percent stake in the media company.

The deal, announced in December, was approved by more than 99 percent of shareholders and will strengthen Rupert Murdoch’s control over News Corp. from about 31 percent to 38 percent.

Regulatory approval is pending and the transaction is expected to close before the end of the fiscal 2007 third quarter.

Arqiva, BT

Arqiva has completed its acquisition of BT Satellite Broadcast Services.

Arqiva announced in November it would acquire BT in a cash deal worth 25 million British pounds ($49.3 million). The acquisition provides infrastructure to extend Arqiva’s operations — including teleports in the United Kingdom, Paris, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles — adding breadth of service, flexibility and long-term security for customers.

Nick Thompson, managing director of Arqiva’s satellite media solutions division, said the deal would provide Arqiva more opportunities in the lucrative U.S. market. "We already have a number of major U.S. customers [for whom] we are providing aggregation services and collecting content from Europe and transmitting it across to the U.S. and also bringing services from the U.S. into Europe," he said. "So this puts bodies on the ground and gives us facilities in both the East and West Coasts, and an ability to look at the market and start to develop it."

SES, GE, AsiaSat

SES closed the split-off transaction with General Electric Co. (GE), exchanging GE’s 103.1 million shares in SES for 100 percent of the new company, SES International Holdings Inc., SES announced. The deal, announced in February, was valued at 1.2 billion euros ($1.6 billion) along with additional cash of 45 million euros ($60 million).

SES International Holdings will include the AMC-23 satellite and its related business; 100 percent of Satlynx; 49.5 percent of Bowenvale Ltd., which includes a 34.1 percent interest in Asia Satellite Telecommunications Holdings Ltd. (AsiaSat); and 5.5 percent of Orbcomm. The announced transfer of about 20 percent of Star One must still be approved by Brazilian regulator Anatel, which is expected to occur shortly, SES said.

"With the completion of this transaction SES achieves two important business objectives: to restructure and optimize the company’s portfolio of assets following the acquisition of SES New Skies and to remove the perceived share overhang which did exist since GE had announced its intention to divest from its interest in SES," Romain Bausch, president & CEO of SES, said in a statement. "The total non-cash assets transferred to [SES International Holdings] represent approximately 8 percent of SES’ total assets and the cash contribution will not impede the refinancing capacity of SES nor the future development of our business. The cancellation of the GE stake in SES will create significant additional shareholder value while taking the free float up to 70 percent and considerably simplifying the share capital structure."