Airbus CEO eyes pan-European military merger with BAE, Dassault, Leonardo and Saab to form US defence rival | City A.M.
Tom Enders, chief executive of aerospace and defence giant Airbus, has said he is open to building a European mega-merger that would create a military aircraft company with the strength to compete with the US.
Enders said it was time to “seriously look at consolidating and coalescing efforts” into forming one body, the Sunday Times revealed yesterday.
The news comes after rival firm BAE Systems called for help to manufacture its designs for a new jet fighter last week, in a project costing more than £10bn which so far has received just £2bn in funding from the Ministry of Defence.
Airbus attempted a merger with BAE in 2012 to the tune of £34bn, but it was rejected by German Chancellor Angela Merkel over fears of Airbus expanding too heavily into the defence industry.
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The proposal would see the military aircraft divisions of Airbus, BAE, France’s Dassault, Sweden’s Saab and Italy’s Leonardo combined to form one effort.
“There’s no room for three different programmes, not even for two,” Enders added. “If you look at how the world develops, it makes a lot of sense, irrespective of political divisions we might have in Europe, that the major industrial forces of the continent work together.”