Regulators make second request in L3-Harris antitrust review

Federal antitrust regulators have made a second request to L3 Technologies and Harris Corp. for information and documents related to the proposed merger of both companies, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings posted Friday.

The Justice Department is reviewing the deal and its request extends the required waiting period until 30 days after the companies comply with this new request or a later time if they make an agreement with DOJ, the SEC filing said.

Both companies continue to expect closure on the deal in the middle of this year to create “L3 Harris Technologies.” They withdrew and resubmitted their required notification to regulators in early December.

DOJ’s request has some precedence as the agency also made a similar ask to Northrop Grumman for information and documents over that company’s acquisition of Orbital ATK that closed in June.

Mergers and acquisitions deals among defense hardware companies typically have much longer antitrust review periods than those among government services contractors. The Northrop-Orbital review took nine months to complete and eventually led to some concessions.

On the other hand, last year’s General Dynamics IT-CSRA deal was cleared in one month and so was the Science Applications International Corp. acquisition of Engility Corp. that should close sometime this month. And the three-way merger to create Perspecta was cleared in three months.

Neither of those three major transactions saw antitrust regulators make a second request for information.