Dassault Sees Thales/Safran Talks Taking Time

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Jun 17, 2011 By Matthias Blamont and Cyril Altemeyer/Reuters AviationWeek.com

PARIS - Dassault Aviation sees talks over possible asset swaps between aerospace and defense firms Thales and Safran lasting weeks, possibly months, its chief executive said on Friday.

Dassault Aviation is Thales’s largest private shareholder, with a 26 percent stake.

Thales and Safran said in May they had resumed talks on a proposed exchange involving avionics and optronics, reviving an idea backed by the French government.

“I believe time is needed for negotiations to take place in a serene manner, and this may take weeks or months,” Dassault Aviation Chief Executive Charles Edelstenne told reporters in a news conference ahead of the June 20-26 Paris airshow.

“Reaching an agreement on such an important negotiation in just a few days doesn’t seem realistic,” Edelstenne added.

The deal is expected to group the electrical power generation systems and navigation activities of the two companies, including automated flight functions, into Safran.

The two companies’ optronics businesses, which combine electronics and optics, would be brought together under Thales, which is Europe’s largest defense electronics firm.

Edelstenne confirmed the civil jet market was improving gradually.

“Even though we are far from the 2008 levels, the global aerospace market is growing, and the unprecedented wave of cancellations seems to be behind us,” he said, adding China was Dassault’s first market so far this year.

Edelstenne also said Dassault had put back in service a grounded Falcon 7x following an in-flight technical incident in May that led to a flight suspension for all 112 Falcon 7x planes in operation.

The entire fleet was to be put back in the air over the next three weeks, he said.

The Falcon 7x, one of which is used by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, was introduced in 2007 and is designed to fly 5,950 nautical miles with at least eight passengers.