Business Briefing
Triumph buys Vought Aircraft
Triumph Group Inc. agreed to buy Vought Aircraft Industries Inc. for about $984 million in cash and stock to broaden its foothold as a supplier to Boeing Co. and Airbus.
The purchase ends a near-decade of ownership for Washington-based Carlyle Group and is among 71 announced or completed acquisitions of U.S.-based aerospace and military assets in the past year, Bloomberg data show.
Vought last year shelved plans for an initial public offering after Boeing bought the operations that supply its 787 Dreamliner aircraft.
ENERGY
Oxy plans plant in Kern County
Occidental Petroleum Corp. plans to build a natural-gas processing plant in Kern County to accelerate development of the state’s largest oil discovery in 35 years.
The new plant, scheduled for completion in about a year, is needed to process gas that flows from wells along with crude, Chief Financial Officer Stephen I. Chazen said.
Los Angeles-based Occidental estimates that the field it discovered last year near Bakersfield may hold the equivalent of 250 million barrels of crude. Efforts to determine how wide and deep the field extends have been frustrated because of the lack of processing facilities, Chazen said.
EARNINGS
Abobe profit falls as sales rise
Adobe Systems Inc. said its fiscal first-quarter earnings declined on higher expenses, but sales climbed as demand for its design and publishing software improved with the economy.
The results surpassed Wall Street’s expectations, and Adobe also gave a strong forecast for the current quarter.
Adobe earned $127.2 million, or 24 cents per share, down 19% percent from a year earlier. Revenue rose 9% to $858.7 million.
REGULATION
FAA proposes fining Northwest
Federal regulators are proposing a fine of almost $1.5 million against Northwest Airlines because it didn’t inspect wires near the cockpit windows on some of its planes.
The proposed civil penalty has its roots in a 1990 order by the Federal Aviation Administration to inspect the wires in the heating system for the cockpit windows in its Boeing 757s. The FAA says that if the wires are too small, they could overheat and possibly cause a fire.
But the inspection didn’t get included in Northwest’s maintenance manual. The FAA says Northwest continued to fly some of the planes even after the problem was discovered in May 2008.
VIDEO GAMES
Nintendo DS is going 3-D
Looking for its next big hit, Nintendo said it would begin selling a 3-D version of its popular handheld console within a year.
The Nintendo 3DS will feature a 3-D display without the need for glasses.
The new portable gaming device will be compatible with software made for earlier DS models, the company said.
Nintendo revealed little else in its brief statement, except to say that it would offer details in June at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.
The announcement comes just days before Nintendo releases the latest version of the DS system, the DSi XL, in North America.
-- times wire reports
