United States defence and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin has acquired Nova Scotia-based undersea defence company Ultra Maritime for $3.45 billion US.
Don’t we want to keep our home grown industries?
Sad…and then we try to get away from the states. It’s all about $$$ :(
Capitalism is a death spiral
The already mostly foreign owners will brag about their exit, Lockheed Martin will shutter canadian jobs, and canada loses out. Now we learned from Stelco that Americans are buying up canadian tech just to destroy it. We need to wake up. US are our enemies.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the CIA was incentivizing the Epstein class to buy Canadian capital with that purpose
Capitalism is when the free market threatens feudalism, so the aristocracy slowly twists and abuses laws (like making a corporation a person, for a start) that deforms and shrivels the free market and turns it into feudalism once again.
Capitalism is where the wealthy stay wealthy, and the rest of us defend it as freedom because we think we have no other option. It is not a death spiral, it is a wealth pump that is busily pumping in the wrong direction
The article doesn’t mention Ultra Maritime’s previous ownership situation, but the company’s announcement of the deal from July does:
BOSTON, Massachusetts; LONDON, UK – Cobham Ultra, a portfolio company of Advent, a leading global private equity investor, today announced that it has agreed to sell Ultra Maritime, a worldwide leader in next-generation undersea warfare solutions, to Lockheed Martin, for USD $3.45 billion.
Since acquiring Ultra Maritime in 2022, Advent has partnered closely with the management team to transform the business into a unified, mission-focused enterprise dedicated to advancing undersea warfare solutions.
Ultra was already foreign owned.
This article shows how far back it goes:
The Woodside facility has been in business in the same location under various names since 1947 — most notably, Hermes Electronics Ltd. — and was purchased by U.K.-based Ultra Electronics in 1995 as the company’s first Canadian acquisition.
So for the last 25 years, the Dartmouth company has been part of Ultra Electronics, which also has a presence in the U.K., the U.S. and Australia.
Nice! Thanks for digging that up.
Another thing I’m just learning of today: I knew that after Cobham shut down Nova Scotia-based Cobham Tracking and Locating in 2013, several people who were let go ended up at Ultra Electronics; what I didn’t realize was Cobham went on to acquire that in 2021. I wonder if any of the ex-Cobham employees were still there, and how they reacted.
If it has an office in Canada then this government considers it Canadian.
Ultra Maritime was sold from one American company to another in this instance.
And people thought neolibs would stand up to fascism and defend national security…
There was no real alternative. They’re still better than christian nationalists.
Its the Canadian branch plant mentality. Make a successful business sell it to foreigners and watch everything be enshittified.
If we keep selling military stuff to the yanks, maybe one day we’ll see it turned against us.
They talk tough about Stelco to drum up nationalist sentiments. While they continue to sell everything to foreign companies and billionaires.
Ultra Maritime has been foreign owned for quite a while, so nothing’s really changing on that front. This is more of a consolidation issue; Lockheed already has a Dartmouth office, and acquiring a Dartmouth company makes for one less employer in town.
