Paul Brinkmann: Lockheed Martin lands $3.5B contract.
Lockheed Martin has landed another huge contract, $3.5 billion to maintain over 300,000 devices and systems used by the military, the company announced Friday.
And that will result in at least a few dozen new jobs in Orlando if not more, company officials said, and possibly thousands of new jobs in the U.S. The new contract adds momentum to Lockheed’s growth in Orlando; the company is building new offices and hiring hundreds in Central Florida. Only a week ago, Lockheed announced another new $200 million contract that would also have a lot of work being done in Orlando.
Orlando-based Pulau Corporation and the Orlando offices of Cubic Global Defense also will have major new roles in the huge contract.
“This is huge for Pulau,” said company president Michael Armstrong. “We’ve been supporting the Army, the Navy primarily in training systems. We were a minor player on the warfighter focused program before, but this will catapult us to a much larger presence.”
He said Pulau would ramp up its total employment globally from about 120 people to around 500. In Orlando, the executive office may add five to eight positions to its staff of 20, Armstrong said. Cubic will likely also be adding jobs at its local offices focused on simulation, but attempts to reach them Friday were not successful. A dozen other small contractors will have a role in the project, but they are not all in Orlando.
The contract is for the Army TADSS Maintenance Program (ATMP); TADDS is short for Training Aids, Devices, Simulators and Simulations. It was awarded by the Army Contracting Command – Orlando, in support of the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation.
The program capitalizes on Orlando’s hub for computer simulation and training technology, including the National Center for Simulation and Team Orlando, which includes training and simulation operations for four branches of the military.
The ATMP program was formerly part of a larger contract with Raytheon that is being broken up.
Amy Gowder, general manager and vice president of Lockheed Martin Training and Logistics Solutions, said the company was proud that the Army had shown confidence in Lockheed.
M2 Systems
M2 Systems, a Maitland firm that specializes in electronicfinancial-transfer software, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The company says the bankruptcy was filed mostly because it is appealing a $3.8 million judgment against it stemming from a civil lawsuit in Connecticut.
M2 Systems is owned by Michael Muscato, who founded it
in 2001, and Joseph Adams, CEO. It has about 20 employees at 500 Winderley Place and reported annual gross revenue of $1.5 million in 2017.
The legal tangle that prompted the bankruptcy is oddly related to the fraud of James Tagliaferri, an investment advisor who was sentenced to five years in prison in 2015 for securities fraud and wire fraud. Although Tagliaferri is not affiliated with M2 Systems, he allegedly used other investors’ money to arrange refinancing of a loan that M2 Systems had taken out, unbeknownst to the Maitland company.
According to documents filed by M2 in the bankruptcy its operating capital was “dwindling as a result of mounting litigation costs” while it appeals the Connecticut judgment, and it will try to negotiate an exit plan with all the parties involved.
Hyundai dealer
Hyundai is about to roll out new dealership locations in Central Florida and around the country, and Orlando businessman William Nero is concerned that the company might be leaving him out of it, according to a new lawsuit in Orlando federal court.
Nero owns Universal Hyundai at 12801 South Orange Blossom Trail. He claims that he reached a deal, in writing, with Hyundai America back in 2009 that guaranteed him the right of first refusal for two of the new luxury dealerships in an eight-county area that includes Orlando.
In January, Hyundai said it was planning 100 new dealership locations where its luxury sedan, Genesis, would be sold exclusively. A spokesman for Hyundai declined to comment on the details of the lawsuit, saying only that the company was researching the situation.
In the lawsuit, Nero says he has received generic letters from Hyundai that indicate he can exclude himself from the expansion. He’s written to Hyundai America several times to get confirmation from the corporation about their plans, and says they haven’t responded, according to the lawsuit.
The suit seeks to bar Hyundai from offering new dealership locations in the area to anyone but Nero, and to compel it to honor the alleged 2009 agreement. It also seeks costs and fees from the corporation, and punitive damages.