Anthony O’Brien on Balance Between Defense-Commercial, US-International Aspects in Raytheon-UTC Deal

Anthony “Toby” O’Brien, chief financial officer at Raytheon, said the company’s proposed merger with United Technologies Corp. seeks to create a new entity that has its business evenly split between defense and commercial work and between domestic and international areas, Defense One reported Thursday.

“The thing we like about [is] that it’s balanced in both those aspects,” O’Brien told the publication Tuesday at the Paris Air Show.

He said the even split between those aspects “provides resiliency and it allows the company to be a stronger competitor in any cycle.”

“[B]ecause of the financial strength of the company out of the gate, [it] allows us to continue to invest mutually in technologies — whether it be on the commercial, the defense side or a technology that benefits both — and at the same time, in parallel continue to shareholders,” he added.

Raytheon and UTC agreed on an all-stock merger on June 9 to form a platform-agnostic technology company that will operate as Raytheon Technologies. The firms expect to close the transaction in the first half of 2020.