CBS Corp has announced that it has agreed to sell its Westinghouse nuclear plant business and its government operations business to a joint venture involving Morrison Knudsen Corp and the UK company BNFL. The deal is worth $1.2 billion.
The joint venture intends to create a new holding company called Westinghouse Electric Co; Morrison Knudsen will control 60 per cent of the new company and BNFL 40 per cent. The company will be involved primarily in the construction and repair & maintenance of nuclear power stations and the delivery and storage of nuclear fuel.
This announcement has curtailed talks between BNFL and Siemens on the setting up of a joint venture. The French government has reacted to the deal by offering Siemens a closer involvement in the French nuclear power plant group, Framatome. The German company has already agreed to buy the Westinghouse conventional power plant business for $1.5 billion, as reported in the July 1998 issue of MPS.
