French securities regulator AMF begins hearings over alleged insider trading at the European aerospace giant EADS Monday. The company is accused of misleading investors by concealing information of delays in its A380 project.
For the first time since 2007, European aircraft giant EADS has posted a quarterly loss (87 million euros). The group also has said it could not forecast due to uncertainty about two key projects, the A380 and the A400M aircraft.
Business Secretary Peter Mandelson says the British government will lend aircraft manufacturer Airbus 340 million pounds (394 million euros) to help it develop the A350 jet and sustain hundreds of jobs in the United Kingdom.
EADS' shares rose by as much as 7% on its first half profits announcement Tuesday after the firm hiked cash forecasts. Its two biggest shareholders, Daimler and Lagardere, also announced they had been provisionally cleared of insider trading.
European aerospace company EADS on Tuesday posted a net profit of 208 million euros for the second quarter, a jump of 76 percent, despite costs linked to delays of its A400M plane.
European aerospace and defence giant EADS has signed a long-awaited defence contract with Saudi Arabia to build a high-tech border security fence. The contract is estimated at over 2 billion euros.
The sales director of Airbus has reaffirmed the company’s objective of 300 orders in 2009, despite the few orders announced since the beginning of the year. Other sources at the company recently said this objective would be hard to reach.
The German Defence Ministry has announced that it will go ahead with the purchase of 180 Eurofighter jets, saying there was still an "operational need" for the planes. Rising costs had raised doubts about whether the deal would go through.
The European aerospace group EADS posted a 2008 net profit of 1.572 billion euros, after a loss of 446 million euros in 2007. The group climbs back into the black.
European leaders were urged on Tuesday to intervene to resolve chronic delays in Europe's largest military project, the A400M heavy airlifter, to safeguard defence ambitions and secure 30,000 high-tech jobs.
