Cleveland Ship Bids for Northrop Grummans Shipbuilding Unit

Cleveland Ship LLC says it made an offer for Northrop Grumman’s entire shipbuilding division on September 23.

The amount of the bid was not released, but according to Bloomberg, the ship division could be worth as much as $4.6 billion.

The 153-page bid includes the Newport News shipyard, employing 20,000 along with two other major yards in Pascagoula, Miss. and Avondale, LA. The deal, if accepted would also include two subsidiaries, AMSEC LLC in Virginia Beach and a San Diego repair facility, Continental Maritime.

If acquired, the firm that would become known as Cleveland Shipbuilding Group Inc., would maintain all the Northrop yards and with their union backing, maintain all employment levels.

Cleveland Ship LLC says financing for the multi-billion dollar deal has been arranged and the equity is all from the U.S. with no foreign partners. Reportedly, Cleveland Ship is the only firm to have bid on Northrop’s shipbuilding division in its entirety.

The small firm’s chairman of the board is Renold Thompson, Jr. a founding investor and recently retired Executive Vice President, Capital Markets, with a long experience as an investor for Oglebay Norton Company. CEO of the Ohio group is Capt. Ed Bartlett a USCG certified Master/Captain, Third Assistant Engineer Officer in the US Merchant Marine and a Navy veteran. In the role of CFO is Robert Monitello with decades of financial services experience most recently with Ernst & Young as an audit partner.

More details of the bid are expected this week when Cleveland Ship holds a press conference.

Northrop Grumman announced in July, their plans to shutdown the Avondale, LA. yard and move productions to their Mississippi yard, while they determined what options they had for selling or restructuring their shipbuilding unit.