Airbus Group to merge with its jetmaking unit

Airbus Group SAS is likely to merge with its main planemaking unit, Airbus SAS, as part of a corporate restructuring being finalised on Thursday, people familiar with the matter said. The restructuring aims to simplify a top-heavy corporate structure inherited from the group's complex origins as a group of separate aerospace firms, and consolidate its position as a European aerospace champion anchored in Toulouse, France.
The merger of the operational parent and jetmaking unit into one company called "Airbus" rekindles an idea debated over a decade ago, but abandoned amid disagreements among former managers and shareholders aligned with competing French and German interests.
The group changed its name from EADS and overhauled its governance in 2012, limiting the influence of French and German minority state shareholdings and granting more independence to management under German-born Chief Executive Tom Enders.
But it remained saddled with separate bureaucracies and confusion over the brand, with the planemaking unit keeping the core "Airbus" identity and no fewer than five CEOs spread across the parent company, three units and one geographical division.