AMSTERDAM: Airbus Group completed an overhaul of Europe's largest aerospace group on Tuesday by changing its name from EADS and reaffirming a pledge to deliver on existing projects before embarking on risky new ventures.
Shareholders adopted the name change to Airbus Group by a 99.99 percent margin, bringing the company's legal title into line with that of its planemaker subsidiary and ending what Chief Executive Tom Enders called the "Babylonian confusion" of several brands.
"There is clearly a positive implication for our acceptance in the market and for integration within Airbus," Enders told reporters after the vote, which endorsed the name already being used by the group since January.
Airbus Group shares rose 1.9 percent to 52.74 euros. EADS was founded in 2000 from a merger of French, German and Spanish assets to create a counterweight to US aerospace and defence giants and quickly embarked on a project to build the world's largest passenger plane, the A380 superjumbo.
By the middle of that decade, delays in Europe's largest industrial project were pushing the company towards a financial crisis and added to in-fighting between French and German shareholders, represented at that time by the French state and French and German industrial groups.
Last year, the company agreed sweeping changes in its corporate governance to limit the power of the French and German governments, which now own 11 percent each, and allow the market to own a majority with an increased float of 73 percent.
"I have seen a sea change. We were something in between a joint venture and a listed company," the company's French Chairman Denis Ranque told the annual shareholder meeting of the changes brought about by the changes in corporate governance.
Now, Airbus is delivering its next project, the A350, with relatively few glitches compared with previous projects and executives said the first delivery of Europe's answer to the high-tech Boeing 787 Dreamliner would be by the end of this year as planned.
Enders however warned the A350 was entering a "red hot phase" in which efforts to ramp up production have to co-exist with design changes stemming from ongoing flight testing.
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