A litany of back-stabbing at Europe's top aerospace group is exposed in leaked US cables, which show American diplomats avidly collecting details on the cracks in US planemaker Boeing's main rival. Dozens of pages of diplomatic reports reveal how feuding executives at Airbus parent EADS gave US diplomats a running commentary on Franco-German rifts between 2005 and 2009.
The period coincided with a sharp rise in public tensions between Airbus and Boeing in a spat over subsidies, market battles for orders and a contest to sell tankers to the US The cables, obtained by the WikiLeaks website and made available to Reuters by a third party, shed new light on political cross-currents that have rarely been stilled in EADS. Their disclosure comes as the group enters another sensitive phase in its history, triggered by a recent decision by German shareholder Daimler to reduce its 22.5 percent stake.
The proposed sale has raised questions over how EADS is governed and the future of a shareholder pact designed to limit the influence of the French state. EADS was forged from a merger of French, German and Spanish aerospace assets in 2000, but the pact means power is shared equally between France and Germany. Britain originally had a direct 20 percent stake in Airbus through BAE Systems. When BAE sold this back to EADS, the cable shows the British defence company would not be missed by its erstwhile partners: "Good riddance" was the response of one German EADS executive.
Other dispatches show executives worrying about industrial espionage by China, politicians fretting about Russia's intentions when it bought a stake in EADS and a leading French industrialist's frustration with the French president. At a lunch in 2005 with the US ambassador to Paris, core shareholder and EADS co-chairman Arnaud Lagardere unleashed a blunt critique of then French President Jacques Chirac.
"Lagardere opined that Chirac messes up everything he gets involved in," according to an account graded "confidential". Lagardere SCA is a media group that represents both itself and the French government on the EADS board under the complex pact, which also includes Daimler.