General Electric Co., PLC to Buy RELTEC Corp.

In a deal that will give it an established North American market base and technical expertise, Britain's General Electric Co., PLC (GEC) has agreed to acquire RELTEC Corp. The deal is worth $2.1 billion (BP1.3 billion) at an agreed price of $29.50 per share in cash, including assumed net debt of $361 million.

RELTEC, with annual revenues in excess of $1 billion, designs, and manufactures high bandwidth network access products including those used for local access—the so-called last mile. This market area has become extremely important due to the rapid growth of the Internet and other business data services.

RELTEC's key US customers include Ameritech, AT&T, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, GTE, Level 3, SBC Communications, Sprint, US West, and WorldCom MCI. The company has 6,600 employees worldwide of which approximately 4,700 are based in the US.