European aerospace group EADS has postponed until next week a board meeting scheduled for Friday on the future of the Airbus A350 XWB passenger jet programme, key shareholder Lagardere said.
The meeting had also been due to discuss possible changes in shareholdings in EADS, said a spokesperson for Lagardere, a French media and technology group.
Airbus, owned by the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, is caught in a crisis over two-year delays to its A380 superjumbo programme, and a consequent cost-cutting and restructuring plan has yet to be detailed.
Airbus chief executive Louis Gallois said earlier this month that the company would decide before the end of November on whether to go ahead with the A350, adding that its launch depended on the application of a company-wide restructuring plan.
The A350 XWB is a twin-engine plane with a capacity of 250-300 passengers and is designed to compete in the long-haul sector, which accounts for 40% of the civil aviation market in terms of value.
French business dailies La Tribune and Les Echos, without citing sources, said on Friday that EADS board members still disagreed on how to finance the A350 programme, which is expected to cost €9-10-billion ($12-13-billion) and is designed to compete with Boeing’s 777 and 787.
Les Echos said a number of scenarios exist for changing the makeup of key EADS shareholders, and none had been discarded. EADS’s main shareholdings are currently split between French and German interests under a shareholders’s pact.
It said opposition among some shareholders to a potential investor from the United Arab Emirates had prompted talk of creating ”ad hoc” units for producing the A350 in which Arab, Russian, Chinese or other non-European shareholders could be welcomed.
The board meeting’s postponement came a day after confirmation from the Paris public prosecutor’s office of a probe into possible insider trading in EADS shares, a matter already under investigation by the French financial markets authority, the AMF. – Sapa-AFP