Aerospatiale and Dassault have agreed on the second stage of their merger - meeting the Government's 1 January deadline for agreement on the basic structure of the company.
In a deal signed in December, the presidents of both companies signed a protocol under which the main elements of the combined organisation, to be called "Dassault Aerospatiale", were settled. The agreement leaves Dassault with its desired "autonomy", adding a division containing the fighter and business-aircraft manufacturer to the three branches of Aerospatiale: civil aircraft, space, defence and missiles, and helicopters.
Each branch will be directed by its own management committee, while international, research and personnel will be joined. Dassault will, in effect, be an autonomous unit under a similar arrangement to that for Eurocopter, but will be 100%-owned by the new company and have two of five members on the management board.
Agreement is still needed on the financial aspects of the merger, which centre on the valuations of Aerospatiale and Dassault, provided by their respective banking groups. This is expected to be resolved "soon", according to a source close to the negotiations, leaving Dassault with between 17% and 25% of the enterprise.
Conclusion of the merger will leave the Government free to pursue the privatisation of Aerospatiale and to look for further agreements aimed at rationalising the European aerospace industry. The revised programme for the privatisation of defence electronics group Thomson-CSF will also go ahead in 1997, and the new Dassault Aerospatiale group is being tipped as a potential bidder.
The Lagardère Group, which won the original decision, remains the favourite. This would probably lead to a missiles "grand alliance" bringing together Matra, Thomson-CSF and British Aerospace, and threaten the planned missiles alliance between Daimler-Benz Aerospace and Aerospatiale.
Source: Flight International