Airbus har seriösa problem

Airbus är i deep shit.

Dec 20, 2018 Ben Goldstein

Shares in Airbus nosedived Dec. 20 after reports surfaced that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating the company’s use of middlemen in jetliner sales.

Airbus could be forced to pay penalties as high as several billion dollars or face a criminal ruling as a result of the probe, according to French newspaper Le Monde.

DOJ did not respond to a query requesting confirmation of the investigation, but Airbus gave ATW a statement Dec. 20 in which it said it was “cooperating with US authorities.”

The probe adds to existing investigations into the use of middlemen in jetliner sales by the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and France’s Parquet National Financier (PNF). Those investigations were triggered in 2016 after Airbus informed regulators in multiple countries about the results of an internal audit that turned up signs of potential wrongdoing involving its use of third-party agents.

In February, Airbus said it had been asked to provide US regulators with information related to the UK and French probes. The revelation of the DOJ probe adds to Airbus’s legal problems in the US, where the company has separately been under investigation since revealing in October 2017 that it may have breached US arms export regulations related to its use of middlemen.

In previous financial disclosures, Airbus has reported that as part of its engagement with the US authorities, the latter have requested information relating to conduct forming part of the SFO/PNF investigation that could fall within US jurisdiction. Here, too, Airbus is cooperating with the US authorities in close coordination with the SFO and PNF,” an Airbus spokesman emailed ATW in request for a statement.

“The US is of major importance to Airbus in terms of production facilities, employees and clients. We are committed to the country, to our customers and our employees there as we are in any other region where Airbus has a major industrial presence.”

At the heart of the issue is a decades-old global system in which some 250 third-party agents were able to secure hundreds of millions of euros in fees each year, a practice Airbus says it ended in 2014. The company has been overhauling its board and senior ranks in part to present a fresh face to regulators.