Originally Posted by
vanraider
Last time i checked, Airbus was an european company...not french...
In name only, mate. A few sops to those who also counts les rosbifs as foes (or at least have had at some point in their histories), but locating HQ in Le 5th Republique wasn't the result of bits of paper drawn from a hat. It's the old Aerospatiale infrastructure with a few hangers-on roped in because the French knew that after the Mercure, even their treasury wouldn't have been able to cope with the A300 failing.
Why do you think it's been (and will continue to be) run by French men - when maybe getting in an unrelated outsider (from wherever) might just be the appropriate way to clean up the current mess?
Sure, Boeing has always been run by yanks, but one look at the performance of their respective stockmarket indices would tend to suggest a rather deeper talent pool in the US. After having gone through three CEOs in six months, a reasonable, independent Board should be casting the net rather wider than they appear to have.
And no, this is not a dig at Airbus aircraft, more a comment on the corporate governance (or apparent lack thereof) at the 'European' enterprise. And the Netherlands HQ is a tax wheeze.