France’s Airbus SE is in talks to sell a part or all of Premium Aerotec, a subsidiary that makes large plane components, Die Welt newspaper reported on Saturday.
Airbus has held talks with one possible buyer, the Canadian private equity investor Onex Corp, the German paper said.
Premium Aerotec generates about 2 billion euros (US$2.39 billion) in revenue and employs 10,000 people, according to its website. It specializes in large and complex aircraft components for Airbus, Boeing’s B787 Dreamliner, the Eurofighter Typhoon and military transporter A400M.
“We have been faced with rumors on sales of Premium Aerotec for more than a decade now. We simply don’t comment on them anymore as a matter of principle,” a spokesman for Airbus said.
The sale would enable Airbus to focus on end production in Europe, the United States and China, the paper said.
The paper noted that Boeing in 2005 sold a similar unit to Onex, which it owned under the name Spirit Aerosystems and listed publicly. Onex no longer has a stake in Spirit, the paper said.
Update: In 2005, Onex acquired Spirit Aerosystems, a U.S. supplier of large component parts and assemblies for commercial aerostructures, for about US$950 million. The company went public in November 2006.
(Reporting by Tom Sims in Frankfurt and Tim Hepher; Editing by Leslie Adler)
(This story has been edited by Kirk Falconer, editor of PE Hub Canada)
Photo courtesy of Premium Aerotec
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