04:01 pm - Tuesday
17 Eads-Airbus managers charged with "Insider trading": hearings began yesterday
Paris, France - Also involved high officers of DaimlerChrysler and Lagardère
(WAPA) - AMF, the French watchdog for the financial market, yesterday began the hearings of the first of 17 people, all former or current managers of the European consortium EADS and of its subsidiary Airbus, charged of insider trading. Among them there are former EADS president Noel Forgeard, who yesterday said "I come here serene", and Thomas Enders, president and director general of Airbus since August 27, 2007, besides further high officers of the DaimlerChrysler group of Germany and the Lagardère group of France, main shareholders of EADS.
The core of the matter, one of the most delicate that AMF has ever had to manage, is the suspect that these people might have earned unlawfully in 2005-2006 by selling their shares in the EADS-Airbus group being in the know of the heavy production delays of the largest commercial aircraft in the world, the A-380, and of the review of the long-term A-350 project, which led to financial previsions worse than foreseen. In fact, once the sale was completed and the information became public, they caused an immediate and steep decline of the shares in the stock market, with large damage for those who had bought them without suspecting the crisis.
EADS instead is charged with not communicating early enough to the market the information about the delays, and it now risks an € 10 million fine.
AMF, which should express itself by the end of the year, might sentence the involved people to a fine up to ten times higher than the amount they earned. A parallel judiciary inquiry is also underway on the matter.
Yesterday during the first day of hearings many lawyers said that AMF was not competent on the matter, and that it wasn't respecting the European regulations in terms of commercial abuse, less rigid than those considered by the Authority.
Tomorrow the day will be dedicated to examine the A-380 file. Thursday will be the day of the A-350. Finally, on Friday the attention will concentrate on the circumstances that led the charged shareholders to sell their stocks. Today, instead, EADS's plan for the years on issue will be examined. Also today Fabrice Brégier, Airbus' number 2, and its former head, Gustav Humbert, will be heard. Humbert stated: "Charges against me are false. I said the truth and my innocence will be demonstrated". Thomas Enders will also be heard today. (Avionews)
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Direttore Clara Moschini