American industrial conglomerate Textron Inc. has agreed to buy aircraft maker Beechcraft Corporation for $1.4 billion, the Financial Times reported on Friday. Textron is the maker of Cessna planes.

Reuters, citing the Financial Times report, said that Beechcraft emerged from a bankruptcy protection in February. It has hired investment bank Credit Suisse AG to seek buyers for its jet plane business, which has been losing money.

The two companies have been in discussions for some time, but initially had differences about the price and scope of the deal, Financial Times sources said.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Rob Stallard said that Textron had paid down its debt in recent years and had the capacity to carry out a deal of this size. Stallard said the remaining Beechcraft business should compliment that of Cessna.

In a note to investors, Stallard said that the increase in Textron's share price for Beechcraft showed that Textron investors viewed the takeover as a good deal.

Bloomberg in a previous report said that Beechcraft had two other suitors, Brazilian aerospace company Embraer SA and Indian automobile maker Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.  The sale could be valued at $1.5 billion, it said in October.