Competition record
General Electric
Deep profile · 1 linked library matter
General Electric is the historic conglomerate whose businesses included jet engines, power equipment, and appliances. In 2001 the European Commission blocked its purchase of Honeywell, and the library records that result as won by the plaintiff.
Overview
General Electric was a broad industrial company. Jet engines were one of its strongest businesses. It also made power-generation equipment, appliances, and, in that era, a large finance arm. This library id is that conglomerate. It is not a profile of a standalone aerospace company.
In 2001 GE agreed to buy Honeywell, whose strengths included avionics and other aircraft systems. The theory in Brussels was conglomerate: a firm that already dominated jet engines could bundle those engines with Honeywell equipment and shut other suppliers out of aircraft programs. American authorities cleared the deal. The European Commission prohibited it.
The purchase did not close. The library status is won by the plaintiff, which in this file is the Commission that blocked the merger. Engines were central to the theory. The case itself was the Honeywell prohibition.
Competition footprint
Aircraft makers choose engines and avionics as a package when they launch a plane.
The prohibited overlap was GE's engines with Honeywell's aircraft systems.
A block means the two companies stayed separate.
Consumer & business angle
Airlines buy the aircraft whose engine and avionics choices the merger would have joined.
Rival engine and avionics suppliers were the businesses the Commission said would be foreclosed.
What to watch
- How conglomerate-effects theories are argued when a strong engine maker buys an avionics firm.
- The difference between this 2001 block and any later GE aerospace business, which is not this case.
Markets
jet engines · industrial conglomerates · power equipment · aircraft engines · avionics · aerospace aftermarket
Also known as: general electric, ge honeywell