Airbus offers Poland joint ventures

Airbus Group is interested in setting up joint ventures to support the Polish defence industry but has downplayed the question of Warsaw taking a direct shareholding in the European aerospace group.

In December, the Polish government said it would consider buying a stake in Airbus Group, then known as EADS. Polish media have said the east European country is interested in taking a 1- 2 per cent stake in Airbus Group.

Talk of integration expanded in July when the head of the company’s helicopters division told Reuters that Poland could become Airbus’s fifth core nation alongside Britain, France, Germany and Spain, in a partnership designed in part to support its bid for a military helicopter contract. “The invitation was to join theAirbusGroupbut not immediately with some stake in it. The story of [ Poland’s] stake is really marginal, this is not the most obvious way or the most keyway to enter the Airbus Group,” Fabrice Lievin, Airbus Vice President for Industrial Globalisation said on Tuesday.

“Getting a stake is not the best way; even the Polish government understood it’s not the best way. They themselves have to construct [ new state defence holding company] PGZ, to make some rationalisation,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of theMSPO Polish defence show. “It’s not what is at stake in the future, it’s about Poland restructuring its industry and us helping them. It can go many ways, for example joint ventures — so there is a capital link, but it’s on a project to project basis. It [ the shareholder stake] could be a symbol, but it’s notwhat is important.”