Trainer too 2 said:
What happened to Wino and his Bush induced one liners after Dr Dave his excellent factual account....
Factual account ?
Firstly, I am not Bush defender but I do not think that Dr Dave has given the actual account. Secondly, even if Dr Dave gave something more or less credible about British goverment's loan to Airbus programmes within BAe, it does not mean that the same thing apply to french and german goverment.
Airbus was only a GIE (groupement d'intérêt économique) until recently. As a GIE, Airbus Industrie had a special tax status. This special status and some accounting tricks gave the possibility to reduce tax or not to pay tax at all on Airbus aircraft sales (I only said that it gave the possibility, it does not imply that Airbus GIE used this possibility not to pay tax on their turn over). The accounting of such GIE is not very easy to understand. That is why there are questions whether Airbus-Aérospatiale-DASA-BAe have ever reimbursed the totallity of EU govt loan.
The relationship between Airbus Industrie and the brits has always been special. I was once told that BAe is almost a sub-contractor to Airbus Industrie. It means that they had a certain amount of work to do (wings) and were paid on wing by wing basis. And as a consequence british govt receives royalties on wing-by wing basis.
More than 50% of Aérospatiale and MBB (DASA) were held by french govt and german govt at the time of A300, A310, A320, A340 and A330 launch. Boeing's rethoric is that the accounting of both companies were opaque and that nobody really knew how it worked. I tend to believe that Airbus GIE-DASA-Aérospatiale accounting was not one hundred clear. This situation has changed since the merger of Aérospatiale and DASA plus CASA (to become EADS). Airbus is now an SAS (Société par actions simplifiées) with clear accounting rules and published results.
With the changes mentioned above, the financing of Airbus SAS programmes will be, normally, less opaque. This is probably why NOW Boeing wants to talk about possible future govermental aid because the control can be done more easily. If I were Airbus' CEO, I would have made Airbus finance department work in a high security environment in a bunker.