Hello, welcome back. Great to have your company again. You're listening to

Emlex's weekly podcast with the top regulatory stories of the moment and one for the

M&A fans out there today. In just over 10 minutes time, we'll be

crossing to Sydney, Australia, to dissect a deal involving one of the country's top four

banks, National Australia Bank, and the local consumer business of Citigroup. It's an interesting

one for us because it taps into some red-hot regulatory issues, namely the

control of data and payment systems.

And Laurel Henning will have all of the gossip for us on that front.

First up though, to the US and the Lockheed Martin Aerojet Rocketdyne deal.

Yes, it's quite a mouthful and it's a fascinating transaction for us. Not only does it

return to the usual themes of behavioural remedies versus structural solutions, and we've talked

about some of those themes on many occasions, but it's also giving us a chance to shine the light

on the involvement of the US Department of Defence. It's all happening

at a time when around the globe, governments are increasingly applying a national security lens

to significant deals. Curtis Heiklberger covers mergers and acquisitions for MLEX, and he has

written a great piece of analysis on this deal. And Curtis joins us now from

Philadelphia. Curtis, firstly, maybe give us an update on where things now stand on the Lockheed

Aeroget Defense merger. Sure. So the merger was announced in December, and they received a second

request from the Federal Trade Commission in February. That means the government had December, and they received a second request from the Federal

Trade Commission in February. That means the government had some concerns and was taking

a deeper dive into the deal. It's a vertical deal. That's where a company acquires another

company and its supply chain. So here, Lockhe, the U.S.'s biggest defense contractor,

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