Noël Forgeard

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Noël Forgeard (born December 8, 1946) is a French industrialist, and was joint CEO of EADS.

Forgeard is married with three daughters and one son. He studied at École Polytechnique (X-Mines).

1 Concorde
2 Appointment
3 Alleged insider dealing
4 Controversial "golden parachutes"
5 External links

[edit] Concorde

Mr. Forgeard was largely responsible for the withdrawal of BAC-Aerospatiale Concorde supersonic airliner from service, in 2003. When Mr. Forgeard, the then-CEO of Airbus, withdrew the company's backing for Concorde, it became impossible for either Air France or BA to continue flights with the aircraft.

Because Airbus specified the maintenance regime and supplied the necessary spare parts for British Airways' and Air France's Concorde fleets, Concorde could not legally fly without the backing of Airbus, as this would invalidate the certificates of airworthiness issued by the two airlines' respective aviation authorities.

[edit] Appointment

From april 1998 until june 2005 Forgeard was CEO of the aircraft manufacturer Airbus SAS.

In late 2004 he was nominated as the next French CEO of EADS. This position is shared with a German—then Thomas Enders—in a system that was established at the creation of EADS in 2000. Forgeard had suggested that this system should be abolished in favour of a single CEO—a move that some of EADS's German shareholders saw as an attempt to engineer a French dominated management team.^{[citation needed]}

Following protracted arguments, which caused embarrassment to EADS at the Paris Air Show, the appointment was confirmed by the EADS Board of Directors on June 25, 2005. At the same meeting, the Board—in consultation with partner BAE Systems—named Gustav Humbert as President and CEO of Airbus.

[edit] Alleged insider dealing

News reports in June, 2006 focused on possible insider dealing at EADS. Joint CEO Noël Forgeard made a 2.5 million Euro profit on the sale of EADS shares, as well as his children the next day for 4.2 million Euro, just weeks before news of Airbus A380 delays was released.^{[citation needed]} Mr. Forgeard has denied any wrongdoing. A major French investigation into insider trading at AIRBUS was leaked to the press during the first week of October, 2007.^{[citation needed]}. In this case, Forgeard pleads being a scapegoat.[1]

Forgeard resigned as CEO of EADS on July 2, 2006 and replaced by Christian Streiff.

[edit] Controversial "golden parachutes"

On April 10th 2007, the press revealed that Mr Forgeard earned €8.55 million (US$12 million) for his departure, despite bad results, a few weeks after the "Power 8" revival plan of EADS was announced by Mr Gallois (the ex-CEO of SNCF, the French national railway), with 10,000 employees made redundant. This indemnity had been decided by the board's unanime vote at the time he was dismissed, several months before the decision of his successors.

Noël Forgeard, the former co-CEO of EADS, was placed into custody by French police on 28/05/2008 for further questioning over insider trading allegations at the aerospace group. Other former or present EADS executives are scheduled to be heard by police in the coming weeks, said the Paris prosecutors office. EADS made no comment. AFX (28/05/2008), La Tribune, Les Echos, Le Figaro, Libération, Aujourdhui en France, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Financial Times Deutschland, The Times, The Wall Street Journal Europe, International Herald Tribune.