Report: Textron (Cessna, Bell) to buy Beech

There is a report in the financial community the Textron, which owns Cessna and Bell will buy Beech for $1.4 billion.
Beech is the new entity that survived from the Raytheon/Hawker bizjet collapse. Beech said they were going back to their roots of selling GA aircraft, namely King Airs with a few Barons and Bonanzas on the side.
The acquisition would give Cessna the leading twin turboprop aircraft in GA…a market that Cessna hasn’t been in since the 80s when they quit making the 404 and 425. Likewise, Cessna doesn’t have alight twin so the baron could be welcome. And Cessna doesn’t have a Bonanza class aircraft in its lineup, it no longer makes the 210 and I’m not sure if you could put the Columbia high performance single in the Bonanza class.

If the deal goes through, I don’t think we’ll have to start calling the King Air a Cessna, Textron would probably keep the marketing under the Beech name, though I wouldn’t be shocked to see some consolidation of the firm’s various Wichita plants.