Lex is a premium daily commentary service from the Financial Times. It helps readers make better investment decisions by highlighting key emerging risks and opportunities.
If Tom Enders ever decides to quit EADS, could somebody offer him a job in Brussels? Anyone who can persuade France and Germany to agree to so many things so quickly deserves a shot at running Europe. Shareholders backed a governance overhaul at the aerospace and defence group on Wednesday that should give the chief executive officer the operational and strategic freedom he clearly lacked in the BAE Systems affair. The question now is what Mr. Enders intends to do with all that hard-won independence.
He is unlikely to test his room for manoeuvre early. EADS claims to have put the BAE affair behind it and is concentrating on reaping the rewards of the boom in commercial aerospace. Airbus accounted for almost all of total group new orders of just over €100-billion ($130-billion) last year; the A350 is still to come; and operating margins are starting to improve. The defence division is very bitty, which is why Mr. Enders wanted to acquire BAE. There are enough ex-defence industry figures on the new EADS board put in place yesterday to ensure that he has the heavyweight backing to start turning it around.
The board certainly does not want for gravitas. There is Jean-Claude Trichet, late of the European Central Bank; Denis Ranque, former CEO of Thales (and likely new chairman of EADS); former Northrop Grumman executive Ralph Crosby; and Daimler chairman Manfred Bischoff. It has been put together as part of a series of moves involving the exit of Daimler and Lagardère as investors and the reshuffling of the stakes held by Germany, France and Spain.
It is stretching things, though, to imagine that this board, stuffed as it is with establishment figures, would have given the nod to a move as far-reaching as the acquisition of BAE. Mr. Enders has achieved a lot of what he wants at EADS. But he may still be the only radical in the room at the next board meeting.