Synergies from “highly complementary” Global Footprint

RUAG is to sell its training and simulation business to Thales next year, if regulatory clearance is granted to the proposed acquisition.

RUAG’s T&S business employs over 500 people in Switzerland, France, Germany and the UAE. It is projected to generate sales of CHF100 million (€86 million) in 2021. Thales’ T&S business has its own facilities in France, the UK, Germany and Australia, as well as joint ventures and training sites elsewhere in Europe, in the USA, and the Middle East. It has 1,000 employees.

The firms’ joint announcement stresses RUAG’s “highly complementary” global footprint, and highlights that the deal will increase Thales’s access to the land training market, but, beyond a welcome from a senior Thales executive to RUAG staff, the announcement does not commit to a specific future headcount. “Employee representative bodies of both Thales and RUAG International will be consulted as part of the project,” it states.

“The training and simulation market is growing and increasingly digital,” stated Yannick Assouad, Thales EVP of Avionics. “Greater use of simulation from concept definition to operations increases effectiveness and helps live training to address cost and environmental challenges. With this project, Thales strengthens the digitisation and European footprint of its T&S activity to support its customers’ ambitions in an ever more complex world.”