CEO: Lagadère may sell stake in EADS

Arnaud Lagadère, CEO of French media group Lagadère, said the company would “more than probably” sell its 7.4% stake in aerospace manufacturer EADS in 2013,

the

Financial Times

reported.

Lagadère, whose father helped form EADS, is its chairman. His company’s stake is voted as a single block with the French government’s 15% holding in the weapons and aircraft maker; the German government indirectly controls 22.5%. German automaker Daimler owns 15% and a consortium of banks owns 7.5%, the

FT

report noted.

According to the

FT,

Lagadère had initially said he would not sell his stake until the launch of EADS’s A350 wide-body passenger jet, planned for 2014. “However,” the report noted, “he wants to raise cash to reduce debt, return money to shareholders and support investment for his struggling media business.”

Lagadère played a key role in scrapping EADS’s attempt to merge with Britain’s BAE Systems. Minority EADS shareholders credited Lagadère for raising concerns about “the financial merits of the deal’s structure” but some EADS executives were frustrated “at having a chairman who did not support the deal,” the

FT

article said.

A separate

FT

report

speculated that EADS executives will welcome Lagadère’s departure because of Arnaud Lagadère’s role in the aborted BAE merger and because it will reduce the influence of the French voting block.

There are other causes for concern at EADS about the 51-year-old Arnaud Lagadère, the report noted. He missed an annual shareholder meeting — his first as chairman — saying that he had “important matters to attend to,” and his “very public relationship with his 22-year-old supermodel fiancée, Jade Floret, has provoked consternation among more earnest EADS colleagues.”

Last year, Lagadère and Floret appeared in a provocative video that was circulated on the Internet. And a forthcoming Belgian documentary “could cause fresh embarrassment for Mr. Lagadère because of the portrayal of his relationship with his formidable future mother-in-law,” the

FT

article said. (Source:

Financial Times,

Nov. 13, 2012.)