GE hopes CFM venture will boost its bid for Alstom

[VILLAROCHE, France] In a cavernous factory planted in farmland here south of Paris, workers assemble the best-selling aircraft engine in history, in a feat of trans-Atlantic industrial cooperation that has few parallels.

Engineers and technicians in blue overalls carefully marry US-made engine cores - each containing a combustion chamber and related elements - to French-made turbofans, turbines and compressors. Combined, they form jet engines weighing 2½ tonnes each.

Every month, up to 65 of these powerful machines are borne by a series of yellow cranes through assembly and testing stations before being shipped out for mounting on the wings of the world's most popular passenger jets.

The engines' builder? CFM International, the most successful joint venture you have probably never …