Baker Hughes Selling North Texas Division

In a lock, stock and barrel buy, the Hughes Christensen division, based at 1600 S. Great Southwest Parkway in Grand Prairie, will change hands in the third quarter. The Houston-based Baker Hughes and Atlas Copco North America, headquartered in Pine Brook, NJ, are mum about the price and the leased-versus-owned components of a real estate portfolio with nine US locations plus offices in Canada, Indonesia, Latin America, Russia and South Africa. One Atlas Copco exec did say the going-in plan does not call for any shutdowns even though it too has sites in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.

"This is a very small piece of our overall business," Gene Shiels, assistant director of investor relations for the Houston-based Baker Hughes, tells GlobeSt.com about the mining tools operation. "All we're really saying is we signed the agreement." The agreement was penned late Tuesday night. The non-core asset will be labeled as a discontinued operation on the corporate books when the transaction closes, according to yesterday's press release.

Baker Hughes Mining Tools is a leading manufacturer of rotary drill bits. Its 2003 revenues totaled about $40 million and 176 employees worldwide. When the deal closes, the Stockholm-based Atlas Copco will roll the operation into its Secoroc division, which has six production plants on five continents and 1,200 employees. In North Texas, Atlas Copco has operations at 480 Wrangler Dr. in Coppell and 2727 K Ave. in Plano.