PARIS, July 2: Airbus parent EADS replaced troubled co-chief executive Noel Forgeard with French railways chief Louis Gallois on Sunday, in an effort to resolve a crisis over delays to the A380 superjumbo.
The chief executive of Airbus, Gustav Humbert, also resigned and will be replaced by Christian Streiff, former deputy CEO of French building materials group Saint-Gobain, the company said.
Tom Enders will remain as co-CEO of EADS and assume responsibility for the Airbus shareholder committee.
“(Gallois) will join CEO Tom Enders in leading EADS and the EADS executive committee with immediate effect,” EADS said.
“Gallois, to date president of the French railway company SNCF, has broad experience in industrial and especially aerospace businesses,” the company said in a statement.
The resigning Humbert said the delays to the A380 had been a ‘major disappointment for our customers, our shareholders and our employees’, adding he felt it was the right course of action to offer his resignation to shareholders.
EADS said Airbus would be integrated more closely into the parent company.
The industrial delays re-ignited a power battle between French and German interests in the six-year-old parent group, as well as within the French clan, in a replay of feuding sparked by Forgeard’s promotion to EADS from running Airbus a year ago.
In a major setback for Forgeard, President Jacques Chirac, a political mentor whom he had served as industrial adviser in the 1980s, signalled a withdrawal of public support a week ago.
Sources close to the talks have said German shareholder DaimlerChrysler, still angry over Chirac’s decision to impose Forgeard’s promotion on the group a year ago, had taken the opportunity offered by the crisis to call for Forgeard’s head.—Reuters
