The marriage between the Franco-German Eds and the British Bae Systems it won't be done. Germany has definitively blocked the negotiations for the merger between the two European defense giants, according to reports from the France Presse agency. The news was released a few hours after the end of the countdown for the maxi agreement: this afternoon, in fact, the deadline imposed by British regulations on the two companies to produce a detailed plan expires. Bae Systems then confirmed the end of the negotiations, expressing clear disappointment at a negative outcome determined by lack of agreement between the national executives.
"Discussions with governments have not reached a point where the two companies could fully extract the benefits of this merger," reads Bae's statement, which however underlines how the project "would have resulted in benefits" for the shareholders of both groups.
Until yesterday it was thought that EADS and BAE could ask for an extension to the study period, even if other sources cited by France Presse had clarified that the negotiations were now stalled.
The negotiation fell through the problematic division between France, Germany and Great Britain of the global group that would have been born from the merger, given that defense is considered a strategic sector in Berlin as well as in Paris and London. Furthermore, yesterday the Financial Times had reported that Bae's shareholders hostile to the operation were continuously increasing and were now approaching 30% of the capital.
At the end of September, the German newspaper Die Welt revealed the conditions for the merger set by Angela Merkel's executive. Berlin demanded "that the balance of power between France and Germany in the new group" be respected. A rock that proved impossible to overcome.
