PARIS – Noel Forgeard, the former co-chief executive of Airbus parent EADS, received an $11.49 million severance package from the company – a payout that came under heavy criticism Wednesday from French presidential candidates.
Socialist hopeful Segolene Royal said she was scandalized by the figure, while centrist Francois Bayrou pledged to introduce a “law of economic moralization.”
Royal called Forgeard’s golden parachute “a scandal, a provocation, especially in this company, where the state is a shareholder.”
“The state could very well have stopped this,” she told France-2 television. The French state owns 15 percent of EADS.
Bayrou, a candidate pledging to bridge France’s traditional left-right divide, said such severance packages “damage the image of business.”
He promised, if elected, to champion a law that would “require transparency in economics (and) decision-making in general assemblies, instead of a capitalism of convenience where everything is decided in small groups.”
Bayrou is trailing Royal and her conservative rival, front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy, in the polls ahead of the two-round vote on April 22 and May 6.
The European Aeronautic Defence &Space Co. NV released the details of Forgeard’s severance package on its Web site late Tuesday. His resignation in July came after it became apparent that delays in the Airbus A380 superjumbo program would have a severe financial impact on EADS.
Forgeard also left amid questions over the timing of his exercising of stock options. He sold some EADS stock several weeks prior to the delays being made public, but has claimed that he was unaware of the seriousness of Airbus’s problems at the time of the share sales. He and several of his former colleagues are being investigated.
Earlier this year, Airbus announced plans to slash 10,000 jobs to help recover from a two-year delay to the superjumbo jet that wiped about 5 billion euros ($6.7 billion) off profit forecasts for 2006-10.
A French union that controls slightly more than 2 percent of the voting rights in EADS said Wednesday it will vote against any resolution proposing a dividend payment at the annual shareholders’ meeting next month.
The CFE-CGC union opposes the dividend payment at a time when Airbus is in the midst of restructuring.
“In EADS’ current situation, there would be no point in opening up a new front between shareholders and employees,” the union said in a statement.
EADS shares fell 0.9 percent to $32.19 in Paris trading.
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