Boeing to sell assets

Boeing is moving closer to its goal of design and final assembly for its commercial jets, agreeing to sell aircraft assembly plants in Kansas and Oklahoma to a Canadian investment group that hopes to boost demand for the facilities' services with business from smaller airplane makers. Twin deals announced yesterday will add $1.6 billion cash to company coffers.

In the first deal, Toronto-based Onex Corp., agreed to buy Boeing's aircraft plant in Wichita, plus other work sites in Tulsa and McAlester, for $900 million in cash and the assumption of $300 million in debt. The announcement ended more than a year of speculation about the future of the Chicago-based aerospace giant, which wants to focus on design and final assembly, leaving the development of components and other aircraft pieces to others. Onex also plans to invest an additional $1 billion in the Wichita and Oklahoma plants during the next five years as it modernizes those facilities and prepares to build Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner, the company's next-generation jet. Onex plans to form a new company — as yet unnamed — to run the plants.

In the second deal, Boeing said it would sell its Rocketdyne rocket engine subsidiary to United Technologies Corp., parent of jet-engine maker Pratt & Whitney, for about $700 million cash. Rocketdyne has sites and assets in California, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida and 3,000 employees.