EADS Said to Move Headquarters to Toulouse to Be Close to Airbus
February 10, 2012, 4:21 PM ESTBy Andrea Rothman
Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. plans to move its headquarters to Toulouse from Paris and Munich to be in the same location as Airbus SAS, its main source of revenue, two people familiar with the plan said.
EADS Chief Executive Officer designate Tom Enders, who now runs Airbus, informed a gathering of 200 top EADS executives in Madrid this week about his plans to relocate the main office, said the people, who requested anonymity because the plan has not yet been made public.
The move would reunite EADS executives with Airbus in southern France, where the planemaker has its main manufacturing hub. EADS, which is partly state controlled, had maintained the Munich and Paris bases after it was created in 2000 in order to assure close relations with governments.
The company has yet to determine how many jobs will be affected by the move, though the number is likely to be several hundred at most, one of the people said. Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported the planned relocation earlier today, citing remarks by Enders at an internal meeting of company executives.
EADS’s Cassidian defense business is based in Munich, while the helicopter subsidiary is based in Marignane near Marseille. Enders is ceding his role at Airbus to Fabrice Bregier, who was previously chief operating officer at Airbus and who will remain in Toulouse, as John Leahy, the sales chief.
As part of a closer link between the two companies, EADS will share the same finance chief and head of human resources with Airbus, the company said last month, when it announced that Enders is taking over from Louis Gallois later this year.
--Editors: Benedikt Kammel, Robert Valpuesta
To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Rothman in Paris at aerothman@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Benedikt Kammel at bkammel@bloomberg.net
