And now it's time to consider the future of the board of directors and execs at BAe. Frankly, this was never going to happen - far too much in the way of national and political interests at stake before you even start to take into account the thoughts of the Pentagon. And the movement up / down of the respective share prices once the announcement was made really told its own story of who would have been the likely benefactors of such a merger.
I would suggest that to appreciate such a fact did not take the wisdom of Solomon, the brains of an archbishop or require you to be a rocket scientist. So for the board to think otherwise, to my mind, points to a serious failure of appreciation and lack of judgement. Is that something we can really afford at the highest levels of (like it or not) a strategically significant organisation?