Q: Finmeccanica owns most of Italy's best-known aerospace names. What are your plans for developing one brand and strategy that unites your large portfolio of businesses? How are you going to create cohesion amongst these businesses?
A: After our recent growth and acquisitions, Finmeccanica is now poised to launch the second stage of its strategic plan. Having achieved revenues of 10 billion ($12 billion) in aerospace and defence, which makes us Europe's third-largest player in the sector, we are now a key reference company for any future European industrial consolidation.
Cohesion is our main challenge, and we have already laid the groundwork to achieve it. Two years ago, before making the acquisitions that eventually changed Finmeccanica, the first step was to change the role of the holding company and to create new functions, such as the coordination of marketing and sales, R&D and finance among all group companies.
Recently, we appointed a general manager to coordinate the defence electronics business, with the objective of speeding up the cohesion process and increasing synergies among the companies in this area as much as possible.
Q: Less than a decade ago Finmeccanica was struggling, yet today the company has staged a remarkable turnaround. What do you attribute this to?
A: Finmeccanica today is totally different from the mere financial holding company it was at the end of the 1990s. Now, as an operating holding company, it devises strategies and also provides guidance to its subsidiaries in terms of financial management, in addition to playing a key role in the joint ventures where it has minority interests.
In the past Finmeccanica was a conglomerate with less than 50% of its business in aerospace and defence, while today it is a group strongly focused on its core business, with a full range of products, many world-class.
We have invested a lot to grow in our core business: with the acquisitions of Telespazio, Aermacchi, Marconi Mobile, Avio, AgustaWestland, and following the defence electronics agreement with BAE Systems, we are now in a position to play a leading role in programmes such as services for the Galileo satellite system; the future military training aircraft, Eurofighter; the main European programmes in protected communications; the future European space carriers, and finally the large helicopters market, where the role of tiltrotors in the medium to long term should not be underestimated.
Q: Do you have plans to sell off any of Finmeccanica's existing businesses?
A: Finmeccanica is today firmly established in aerospace, defence and security, which account for more than 80% of the group's business. However, we are in no hurry to sell our non-core railway transport and energy generation assets.
Q: Are you planning more acquisitions, either in Italy or internationally?
A: We have said many times that right now, our main goal is to integrate as fully as possible the businesses that we have acquired in the past two years. This does not mean we are not on the lookout for good opportunities, especially in the defence electronics sector, where we could be interested in some small and medium high-tech companies operating in the US market.
Q: Earlier this year Finmeccanica and French company Alcatel formed a joint venture in the space sector. Are you looking to bring any other companies, such as Thales, into this relationship to form a company capable of competing with EADS?
A: I think that it is up to the French government to take the first step and decide whether, how and when it wants to consolidate its national industry. We are willing and able to consider any sort of cooperation with Thales, with or without Alcatel.
Q: Are you looking to form alliances with the French defence industry? If so, what form would these alliances take?
A: We Italians already have alliances in many sectors with the French industry! And we have had them for many years, since the 1960s, when the unsuccessful Mercure programme was launched. Then we moved forward with Atlantique and some of Dassault's executive projects.
Today, Alenia Aeronautica and Aermacchi participate in many Airbus programmes and there are many joint activities in helicopters (NH90) and in the naval (Horizon and FREMM) and space (Cosmo-Skymed and Pliade) areas.
Lastly, we have structural alliances, joint activities with ATR and MBDA and recently entered into an alliance with Alcatel in the space sector. It is still too early to say about other alliances, but there are many possible cooperation areas, both in space and defence electronics.
Source: Flight Daily News
