EADS, Airbus managers to sue Paris bourse watchdog

Oct 6, 2007, 12:17 GMT

Paris - Airbus chief Thomas Enders and senior managers from Franco-German aerospace giant EADS plan to sue the supervisors of the Paris bourse, AMF, to counter claims of insider trading, Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa learned from industry sources Saturday.

One of the major shareholders in EADS, Lagardere, had already announced its plans to take legal steps to recover damages.

It is also possible that the parties will take out a civil action for prejudgment.

Enders has already protested to AMF that his company had suffered a damaged reputation as a result of leaks to the press and has demanded that the supervisors to complete their investigations promptly and communicate their findings appropriately.

He assured his management colleagues that he 'would exhaust all the legal opportunities to ensure the rights of the Airbus employees affected.'

Reports in the Paris press about a preliminary report from the AMF have fuelled suspicions that practically all of the senior managers at EADS and major shareholders Lagardere and DaimlerChrysler used insider knowledge about problems completing the Airbus A380 at the end of 2005, beginning of 2006 to make lucrative share deals.

Enders earned more than 700,000 euros (988,000 dollars) in November 2005 as joint head of EADS with options for 50,000 shares.

Enders told Germany's Focus magazine that he did not have a guilty conscience about his earnings as the extent of the problems with the Airbus A380 were not known at that time.

The share options were part of his salary deal, he said.

When other senior managers were selling off shares in March 2006, Enders refrained from doing the same.

As recently as May, Airbus head Gustav Humbert said at the board of directors meeting that he expected the company to make up in part the delay in supplying the A380, but in June new delays were announced and the company's share price collapsed.

EADS' share price seems unaffected by the new insider-trading rumours: on Friday it closed up 0.38 per cent on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange at 22.32 euros.