Originally Posted by
deptrai
....or it was a gaffe of some financial beancounter who prematurely spilled his "what if" scenarios...
Maybe they had no choice. As a publicly traded company,and with the way financial rules work these days (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley), a board can't just tuck the bad news under the carpet and hope for the best. Once they know of stuff that's going to significantly impact the business, it's their duty to inform the market.
If someone had, say, reported to the board a few months ago that they would have to close the line in 4 years, and then the board didn't make that known, and someone bought shares on an expectation that the A380 was ticking along nicely, then the news came out, there'd be Hell - and a whole slew of lawyers! - to pay i suspect.