Airbus Plans To Reduce Dassault Stake

Airbus Group has stepped
up plans to unwind its 46 per cent holding in Dassault Aviation, as it begins to weigh the possibility of selling a 10 per cent stake by placing it with financial institutions.
A spokesman of the Group said such a move, if it went ahead would be combined with a further reduction of the company’s shareholding by taking part in a share buyback being prepared separately by Dassault.
Shareholders in family controlled Dassault Aviation, which makes Rafale fighter planes and Falcon business jets, last month approved a buyback of up to 10 per cent of the company’s tightly traded stock.
“That provides an obvious route for a partial exit”, Airbus Group Head of Corporate Communications, Rainer Ohler said.
“We believe, however that longer –term value objectives might be better served through combing a sale to Dassault with the placing of a meaningful amount of shares in the market,  enough for there to be much improved liquidity, and so we continue to review our options in this respect”, Ohler said.
According to him, “a first placing of about 10 per cent, combined with a Dassault buyback, would allow us to reach this objective. If we take this route, we could hope to capture subsequent value upsides through further secondary placing”.
Reuters reported that Dassault Aviation is controlled by family holding company Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault, which owns 50.55 per cent of the company. Airbus Group owns 46.32 per cent and 3.13 per cent is held by public investors.
Since the public float is not large enough to accommodate the buyback, Airbus Group could make up the bulk of the operation as well as selling shares to investors, meaning that if successful the deals could be worth close to EUR €2 billion.