A fresh round of flag waving has been under way in the USA since notification in February that the general aviation arm of China's AVIC - known as CAIGA - had made a bid to buy local favourites Cirrus Aircraft.

Cirrus prospered in the boom times and has continued to sell its single-engined piston-powered line since the downturn in 2008, albeit in smaller numbers. Now, however, there is simply no money left to finish developing its prospective future saviour: the single-engined Cirrus Vision jet.

A call to arms by consultant Brian Foley on 15 March fanned the patriotic fires in the USA. "Cirrus is an American success story that started in a humble dairy barn, introduced important new technologies and rocketed to market leadership," he wrote. "So it is not surprising that our US aviation community would take an interest in this pending sale. But what surprised me was the speed, passion and near-unanimity of the feedback we received. I didn't talk to anyone who wanted to see Cirrus shipped overseas."

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On this basis, Foley is "confident we can identify and combine enough qualified investors who value Cirrus' promise as a distinctively American company", and so is seeking to lead a counteroffer.

But in the case of Cirrus, the "keep it American" mantra is fallacious. The fact is that Cirrus has since 2001 been majority owned by a Bahraini investment firm, which raises most of its capital from countries in the Gulf region. Foley even acknowledges this reality later in his missive.

So: where was the sound and the fury a decade ago, when Bahrain came to town with $100 million to rescue Cirrus from a predicament caused by ramping up the SR22, on which hopes were pinned at the time? Or, for that matter, when Brunei closed in on Piper Aircraft?

There was none. US investors were keen on short-term gain over red, white and blue.

Back in 2006 former Cirrus chief Alan Klapmeier explained to Flight International how Middle Eastern investors differed from their US counterpart: "They didn't have a short-term time horizon," he said. "They were in for four to seven years, but had no requirement to exit. If it had been a company that wanted immediate quarterly returns, it wouldn't have worked."

Maybe Foley's attempt to corral investors will signal a return to long-term horizons for the US investment community, at least when China is the hunter. But we're not holding our breath just yet.

Source: Flight International

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