Whitehall’s mistake over BAE and EADS

There have been some sharp responses to the demise of the proposed BAE EADS merger. My personal favourite is John Redwood’s pithy:

‘Several of you wrote in expressing dismay at the proposed tie up between BAE and the Franco German civil aviation company. I did not write about it, as I assumed it would be an impossible deal to execute. The documentation was very voluminous, so I did not bother to read it. The politics were always likely to bring it down, so there was no need to analyse the business, economic and strategic issues.’

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Ross Clark

Britain is living beyond its means

There seems to be little surprise that the deal collapsed. Most commentators welcome the failure, despite the commercial sense of the proposal. Douglas Carswell, for instance, hopes that it might lead to more competition within defence procurement. And the FT says (£) that the ‘correct decision’ was to put the doomed negotiators ‘out of their misery’.