...+ Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corp. (Wabtec) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to merge with General Electric's (GE) transportation business in a transaction valued at approximately $10 billion (net of tax benefits). + If the transaction is completed as proposed, we believe Wabtec would be one of the world's largest providers of technology enabled equipment, systems, and value-added services for the locomotive, freight, and passenger rail industries. + However, Wabtec intends to partially finance the acquisition with about $2.9 billion of incremental debt, which raises the potential for the company's already stretched credit measures to remain well above 3x for a sustained period. + Therefore, we are placing our ratings on Wabtec, including the '###' corporate credit rating, on CreditWatch with negative implications. + We will resolve the CreditWatch placements after we review Wabtec's prospective credit measures, future financial policy, and capital...
