General Electric Co. (GE) and Rolls-Royce Group are gathering support for the second F-35 engine program, which Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Barack Obama have singled out as unnecessary in the tightening credit environment. Representatives of the two companies met top Pentagon officials recently to offer a fixed-price package on about 100 low-rate production engines for the F-35 fighter.

The deal would cover low-rate production engines to be built from 2012 to 2015. Without F-35, GE would be out of the large fighter-aircraft engine business. Gates recently reiterated his opposition in Fort Worth, Texas, where Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) builds the F-35. Lawmakers backing the program are of the view that continuing work on a second engine will stimulate competition and lower costs on the massive $300 billion fighter program in the long run.

United Technologies Corp.’s (UTX) Pratt & Whitney unit has seen the

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General Electric (GE) is arranging to sell its security business, which makes alarms, surveillance systems and other safety products, and hopes to attract bids in the range of $2 billion for the unit. This move represents GE’s strategy of exiting from non-core businesses. GE has hired JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) to sell the portion of its business that makes security products. The business has drawn interest from GE’s rivals United Technologies Corp. (UTX) and Tyco International (TYC). Security assets have traditionally attracted private equity buyers, but due to the difficult economic environment and an expressed interest by GE in selling these assets to a strategic buyer, bid amounts could be depressed for such a product portfolio. It remains in question whether acquirers will be interested in GE Security’s full portfolio of products, or only bits and pieces of the business. General ...

The Ministry of Electricity and Water in Kuwait recently selected General Electric Co. (GE) for building a 2,000 megawatt power plant. The company had submitted a bid for 770 million dinars ($2.7 billion) for the Subbiya plant.

In April, Kuwait floated a new tender for building turbines for a plant in the north of the country. At that time, the Ministry had expected costs for bringing the plant into effect by 2011 to be far less than 700 million dinars. Kuwait has one of the world’s highest per capita power consumption rates.

Apart from GE, other companies that initially qualified for the project included Germany's Siemens (SI), Japan's Mitsui & Co. (MITSY) and Marubeni Corp., Spain's Iberdrola Ingenieria Y Construccion and Canada's SNC-Lavalin Ltd.

General Electric has products and services ranging from aircraft engines, power generation, water processing and security technology to medical imaging, business and consumer financing, media

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