So hardly owned by the governments then! No controlling interests and no
direct holdings either and if you extracted the Government owned shares
prorata, the governments own 20% of 80% of EADS interest in Airbus, BAE owns
20% of Airbus. (WAW)


"John R"
What do you mean by a healthy share?

On the EADS side about 0.06% of stock is held directly by government of
France. 30.17% is held by SOGEADE of which government of France owns
half.
5.51% is owned by SEPI, which is a holding company of the government of
Spain.


"John R" wrote in message
...
Thomas Borchert wrote:

Sfb,

The US government buys products from Boeing. The EU countries
continue
to give launch subsidies Airbus. There is a difference despite the
unproven EU contention that the military sales to the US are somehow
subsiding Boeing's commercial aircraft development.


Yeah, right. Sure. Whatever you say...

Well as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, 8/10 Airbus Parent EADS
gets
more defense business (from government) than Boeing does. BAE does a
lot
of
government defense business, even a healthy amount from USA. So even
if
you think that selling a product to the government (airplanes, rockets,
pencil sharpeners) is a "subsidy" to the company, even that argument is
more
than cancelled out. Note that Airbus doesn't even bother to deny they
are
so heavily subsidized anymore, they're only defense is "well, but but
but
Boeing does it too!" Right.

Meanwhile Airbus enjoys massive government subsidies such as risk free
launch loans for products, direct financial subsidies, reduced interest
loans, and massive infrastructure construction. $4 Billion launch aid
for
A380 alone. Airbus will likely sucessfully shake down governments for
at
least $1 billion of launch aid for the A350 if it hasn't already. The
A380
required enormous infrastructure building, such as bridges, canals,
roads
etc. just so that parts could be moved around Europe from one factory
to
another until they reach the final assembly in Toulouse, France.

Oh and a healthy share of Airbus/EADS's ownership is by government as
well.