If I’m not mistaken the French are the largest shareholder of Airbus. The French and German governments negotiate who the CEO will be.
Wasn’t it just 3 years ago the French were denying the US use of French airspace to fight the war on terror? And now we are going to let them control our access to tanker planes and spare parts? This is insanity!
If Im not mistaken the French are the largest shareholder of Airbus. The French and German governments negotiate who the CEO will be.
Not exactly. Airbus is a 100% subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (formerly 80% EADS and 20% BAE. For the EADS ownership structure I'd have to quote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EADS:
As of 3 July 2007 41.63% of EADS stock is publicly traded on six European stock exchanges, while the remaining 58.37% is owned by a "Contractural Partnership".[19] The latter is owned by SOGEADE (27.38%), Daimler AG (22.41%), SEPI (5.46%) and Dubai Holding (3.12%).[20] SOGEADE is owned by the French State and Lagardère, while SEPI is a Spanish state holding company. France also owns 0.06% of publicly traded stock.
Also a small part of the publicly traded stock has been bought by a Russian bank / state holding. That's why German "Tagesschau" (think PBS news) once came up with these numbers:
So you could say that through state holdings, Lagardere and Daimler AG the French and German side side still somewhat "control" EADS/Airbus, however the largest part of EADS is publicly traded.