BAE Systems and EADS have announced that they have terminated talks which they expected to lead to a dual-listing merger.  Both have issued official looking press releases, but it became very evident in recent days that the Government owned stakes in EADS, particularly the shares held by France and Germany, were going to be a major stumbling block to agreement.

Talks had already looked at creating an internal partition to ensure that no state secrets could be passed to other countries, but that was not enough.  It was generally regarded that the proposed $44 Billion merger had good commercial logic, but national interests got in the way.

Jeremy Parkin – HeliHub.com