(AFP) On July 2, the co-chief executive of EADS and the head of its Airbus subsidiary paid with their jobs for the crisis that has wiped billions of euros off the value of the company. The two companies issued terse statements announcing EADS's French co-boss Noel Forgeard and Airbus's head Gustav Humbert, a German, were stepping down.
Both were replaced by Frenchmen. The German co-chief executive of EADS Thomas Enders stays in place. Forgeard is to be replaced by Louis Gallois, the chief of France's state-owned SNCF rail company, while Humbert is to be succeeded by Christian Streiff, a former top executive for the French industrial group Saint Gobain.
"As president and chief executive of Airbus, I must take responsibility for this setback and feel the right course of action is to offer my resignation to our shareholders," Humbert said in a statement.
The news of the delays wiped 5.5 billion euros (6.5 billion dollars) off EADS's market value and left Airbus trailing rival Boeing.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2006
