Carlyle to Buy Rexnord
Carlyle Group, the Washington merchant banking company, agreed to acquire Milwaukee-based auto parts manufacturer Rexnord Corp. in a deal worth $913 million. Carlyle will pay $880 million for the company and invest $33 million in working capital, according to Rexnord's parent company, Invensys. Rexnord, whose primary products are clutches, brakes and chains, employs 5,000 people at 30 plants worldwide and had sales of about $765 million last year. To pay for it, Carlyle planned to spend about $300 million from its buyout funds and borrow the rest from banks, people familiar with the sale said last week. Carlyle officials could not be reached for comment.</br></br>MeriStar Hospitality, a hotel real estate investment trust, said its third-quarter results would be lower than expected because of the decline in business travel and the lack of travelers around the Sept. 11 anniversary. MeriStar lowered its third-quarter guidance for revenue per available room and its funds from operations. Revenue per available room would decline 4.5 percent to 5 percent from the third quarter of last year, compared with previous guidance of no change to a 2 percent decline. The forecast for funds from operations per share was lowered to 10 cents to 12 cents, compared with earlier guidance of 20 cents to 25 cents.</br></br>BB&T, a North Carolina banking company, said Friday that it would buy Equitable Bank, a Wheaton thrift, for $52.6 million in stock. The small Montgomery County bank, founded in 1879, focuses mostly on consumer deposit services and home loans. It has five branches in suburban Maryland, all of which will become BB&T branches. BB&T operates more than 1,100 banks in the Southeast and in recent years has bought a half-dozen banks in Washington, Maryland and Virginia, giving it about $3 billion in assets and more than 60 branches in the region. BB&T is to exchange one share of BB&T for each share of Equitable. That values Equitable at $36.18 a share, a 34 percent premium over its most recent trading price before the deal was announced. Shares of Equitable rose more than $7 Friday to close at $34.47 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The acquisition, which must be approved by regulators and Equitable shareholders, is to be completed in the first quarter of next year.</br></br>Legg Mason, a Baltimore brokerage firm and money manager, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell up to $500 million in various securities. Legg Mason, which has bought three money management firms with $3.7 billion of assets in the past 18 months, said it would use proceeds of future securities sales for general corporate purposes, including repayment of debt and acquisitions. Legg Mason filed what is known as a "shelf" offering, used to register securities in advance so companies can sell them quickly when market conditions are favorable or financing needs arise. Terms of the securities are not usually available until the sale period begins.</br></br>Northrop Grumman said Friday that its Electronic Systems division is laying off about 230 employees at its operations in Maryland, Alabama, New York and Connecticut. About 215 of the layoffs would occur at the division's plants in Linthicum, Annapolis and Sykesville, the Baltimore Sun reported. Some of the Annapolis cuts, its Oceanic and Naval Systems business unit, are because of delays in financing on projects for the Defense Department, said Northrop Grumman, which is based in El Segundo, Calif. Northrop Grumman is Maryland's largest manufacturing employer. Its Electronic Systems division employs 9,000 people at operations in Linthicum, Annapolis, Sykesville, Belcamp, Hagerstown, Gaithersburg and Lanham.