Aiming to reduce costs and speed decision making, Airbus Group will merge with Airbus Commercial Aircraft, the companies announced last week. Both companies are headquartered in Toulouse, France. The merger “paves the way for an overhaul of our corporate set-up, simplifies our company’s governance, eliminates redundancies and supports further efficiencies,” said Airbus CEO Tom Enders. One way to reduce costs will be the elimination of redundant positions, but Airbus offered no details on job cuts. According to Bloomberg News, Enders told employees in a memo that the impact of the merger on the workforce would be “not negligible,” but the cuts will be fewer than in a previous restructuring, when 8,000 jobs were lost.
“We aren’t just trying to get leaner at the shop-floor level, we are really starting at the top of the company,” Enders told The Wall Street Journal. The goal is to ensure that the changes to management ranks are made “as thorough and substantial as possible,” he said. The changes will yield financial benefits starting next year, Enders said. The Journal noted that Airbus faces many challenges, including high costs to build its new A350 long-range jet, technical problems and delays with the A400M military transport plane, and declining sales of the A380 superjumbo. Enders said he is working to make the company “faster and leaner” and aims to fight off competition not only from Boeing but from fast-moving startups like SpaceX.
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Airbus simplifying company structure
