LONDON, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- BAE Systems, Europe's largest defense company, said it would abandon a plan to sell units making airplane and public transportation components after having offered it on the market for four months.
BAE put its Platform Solutions business up for sale last September, with analysts estimating it could fetch up to $2 billion.
The deadline for final offers passed last week, The Wall Street Journal reports, suggesting that BAE Systems didn't get the price it was asking for. Potential customers included General Electric and several private equity funds.
"Despite considerable expressions of interest no sale has yet been agreed," the company said in a statement released Tuesday. "It has been concluded that it would not be in the best interests of the group or its platform solutions business to extend this lengthy period of uncertainty and a sale of the business is no longer being pursued."
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Observers said the sale was pushed in response to tighter defense budgets at home and a potential acquisition strategy in the United States, where BAE Systems is strong. The company last month announced it might cut nearly 1,400 jobs in Britain after London's decision to slash defense spending by around 8 percent until 2015. This comes on top of a September 2009 announcement in which BAE Systems said it would reduce its workforce by more than 1,000 positions in Britain until 2012.
Platform Solutions includes a commercial avionics, a defense avionics and a power and energy management unit, a high-growth section that produces hybrid motors for the public transportation sector to reduce emissions. The aviation units make systems controlling engine performance, sophisticated cockpit displays for fighter jets.
Last November, the unit delivered the first batch of a new helmet-mounted optical sighting system to be used by gunners on the Lynx Mk8 helicopter of the British navy.
Based in Johnson City, N.Y., Platform Solutions employs more than 4,200 people at facilities in the United States, Mexico, Britain and Singapore.
Its parent BAE Systems is Europe's largest privately held arms firm, employing more than 100,000 people.
The main equipment manufacturer of the British armed forces and strong in the United States where it generates more than half of its sales, BAE Systems is building two aircraft carriers for the British navy and is involved in the Joint Strike Fighter and Eurofighter programs.
