EADS-BAE merger off; government interference, key shareholder kill it
The EADS-BAE Systems merger is off, killed by a combination of government interference and a key BAE shareholder who opposed it. Read here and here and here.
We favored the merger as a way to get the French and Germans out of EADS’ knickers. The British government also meddled in the affair, for its concern about the diminished role of BAE post-merger. BAE is a top UK employer and defense contractor.
Flight Global published a list of the Top 100 aerospace companies in the world. Boeing is #1, EADS #2 and BAE #15. A PDF is here Top 100 Aerospace Companies, avoiding Flight’s annoying new Flight Global Club nonsense.
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Leeham News and Comment
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Tood bad for EADS, first failure for Enders.
At least Boeing should be happy.
Good, Europe doesn’t need defence megacorporation that is outside of government control. Current arrangement works quite good, so no reason to change it.
It seemed rather ill-advised to begin with but even if the BAE + EADS government stake/shareholders had approved it the merger would probably not have received the consent of the US DOJ/FTC or in the best case, BAE would be forced to shed its US subsidiaries (United Defense, Sanders, etc). which would have undermined one of the key stated motivators for the merger…
Doomed from the start.
Perhaps RR and BAE would make an interesting merger.
Even UK dont trust other EU states, why should Pentagon or the White House? EADS getting inside US defence is just a absurd dream of EU nationalists. UK is US 51st state, the rest of us are suspicious peace loving commies
Just to balance my post I think there are equal numbers of brain dead in US government as in EU parlament.
Probably less debrained than you think.
What future developement made this an attractive proposition for BAE?
Think about why BAE shares rose on that information.
IMHO there is not much future defense spending available for BAE.
The pudding to share is fading away fast. The US is broke.
US politics will follow demands to protect local commerce.
The proposed EADS/BAE merger targets the nonUS market. ( in competition
with US manufacturers and getting out of politically leveraged ITAR constraints ).