Hitting the Silk at Airbus

It looks like Airbus parent company EADS has yet to put an end to its management snarls. The group announced on Monday that the chief marketing and strategy officer Jean-Paul Gut would resign, effective in October.

While Gut's departure is hardly on par with the high-drama exit last July of C.E.O. Noel Forgeard, it's rehashing many familiar issues just as EADS showed signs of forging towards recovery.

For one, the company's management is still under investigation on insider trading charges. French authorities are looking into whether company executives, including Forgeard and Gut, benefited from privileged knowledge relating to Airbus's costly delays on their A380 jumbo jet.

Then there's the matter of Gut's $3.7 million severance package, which is reminiscent of the controversial $10.8 million "golden parachute" awarded to Forgeard last year. At the time, French politicians -- including Nikolas Sarkozy, in his ultimately successful campaign for president -- expressed disapproval at the ailing EADS cutting such an outsized check to its departing leader.

In an interview published today in the French newspaper Le Figaro, Gut defends his severance pay as in line with the terms of his employment contract, and denies rumors that EADS investor Qatar Investment Authority partly financed the package.

Gut also denies insider-trading charges relating to Airbus 380 delays.

The exact reasons for Gut's departure are as yet unclear. The EADS press release cites a "divergence in views over the organization of sales and marketing function" within the company and explicitly denies disagreement over strategy. In Gut's Figaro interview, however, he mentions strategy disagreement among the reasons motivating his departure.

In the end, investors didn't seem to mind the latest departure. EADS shares rose 40 euro cents to 22.69 euros in Monday afternoon trading in Paris.

by Liz Gunnison