European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS) is in the process of a strategic review to determine its future after its failed merger with Britain’s BAE Systems
, its head of North American operations said yesterday.
“We’re in the process of a strategy review to determine what is the next step forward,” EADS N.A. chief executive Sean O’Keefe told reporters following a briefing at the National Press Club in downtown Washington.
“I don’t want to preempt the outcome of that assessment,” O’Keefe later said. “It’s underway now and we’ll know very promptly here in terms of what the direction will be and how we’ll go forward.”
O’Keefe wouldn’t specify when he expected the review to finish, except to say “I’m a member of the group executive committee, we meet pretty regularly.”
O’Keefe said despite not working out, the merger attempt opened the company to the possibilities it can have if it has a “broader, balanced portfolio.”
“Again, the combination between us and BAE Systems was a disappointment it didn’t come to fruition,” O’Keefe said. “It came awfully close and opened up our view of the wide range of different capabilities we can participate in if we have the broader, balanced portfolio in order to do so.”
EADS and BAE called off their planned $94 billion merger Oct. 11 saying the British, French and German governments couldn’t come to terms with each other, nor the reasoning behind the deal.
When the merger was first announced last month, industry heads and analysts believed that if the United States government blessed the combination of EADS and BAE, which does about half of its $30 billion in annual sales in the United States, then it might not stand in the way of mergers between major defense companies here (Defense Daily, Oct. 11).