L3 & Harris restart antitrust process as part of merger

L3 Technologies and Harris Corp. have withdrawn and resubmitted the required notification to federal antitrust regulators over their proposed merger, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings posted Tuesday.

With those filing, the required waiting period for review goes to Jan. 10, 2019 unless the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission ask for more information. Both companies continue to expect to close the merger in the middle of next calendar year.

Antitrust reviews of large transactions between defense primes typically take longer than those involving government services companies.

Whereas the review of Northrop Grumman-Orbital ATK took almost nine months, the General Dynamics IT-CSRA deal was cleared in one month as was Science Applications International Corp.-Engility Corp. And the complex creation of Perspecta was cleared in three months.

The Northrop-Orbital review eventually led to one concession: the solid rocket business was firewalled from the rest of the corporation and required to make its products available to all competitors for missile defense contracts.

It could very well be that L3 and Harris may have to make some divestitures or other concessions given that deal’s size and scope, even as there appears to be very little overlap between both businesses.

But both companies have also not been shy about divesting non-core assets in recent years, including the bulk of their services portfolios.