Why can't the French dump fuel?

James Robinson wrote:

Cub Driver wrote:


ThomasH wrote:


It almost sounds as if you would be believing that Airbus is French.
:-)

It is, for all practical purposes. There would be no Airbus without
France; it's located in Toulouse; and France is the largest
stakeholder.


Not true. The Toulouse plant may be where final assembly is done, and
where the operating headquarters of Airbus is located, but there are a
number of other manufacturing plants, and France is not the largest
stakeholder. The company is 20% owned by British Aerospace, with the
remaining 80% owned by EADS.

According to the following site, the ownership or EADS is:

http://www.reports.eads.net/2004/ar_...c_b3_3_3_0.php

- 30.2% Daimler Chrysler
- 15.1% Government of France
- 15.1% Lagardère (A French corporation)
- 5.5% Government of Spain
- 33.2% Publicly held shares

Therefore, the French government only owns about 12% of airbus, and is
not the largest shareholder.

Why should that interest anyone?

What those figures do show is that French ownership is in the range
24.16 to 50.72 %, depending on what portion of the "Publicly held
shares" are in French hands.

Even at the minimum limit of 24 %, French participation is
still bigger than that of any other country, as far as one
can tell from those numbers.

So which country has a larger stake than France according to you ?

CV