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Dominique de Villepin, the French Prime Minister, also wanted to rewrite the shareholder pact that gives the French Government a passive role in EADS’s boardroom.

But he was opposed by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, by DaimlerChrysler and by Lagardère’s chairman, Arnaud Lagardère.

In a joint statement, Herr Enders and M Gallois said that their “absolute and immediate priority” was reviving Airbus.

NEW MEN IN THE HOT SEATS

LOUIS GALLOIS, 62, has been named joint chief executive of EADS after ten years heading SNCF, the French state railway network, earning renown as a skilled and diplomatic manager.

Appointed in 1996, M Gallois pulled off the feat of modernising the SNCF’s network without inflaming its powerful unions. He offloaded the operator’s debt, turned round its finances and introduced reforms such as internet reservations. In an organisation as entrenched as the SNCF, this has been hailed as a stunning performance.

M Gallois’s ability to oversee change without turbulence was a determining factor in his appointment as joint chief executive of EADS — a group torn by Franco-German conflicts.

Although on the left, and close to French eurosceptics in the 1980s, he is unlikely to envisage big upheaval in the aerospace and defence group.

M Gallois is a former head of Snecma, the French engine maker, and Aérospatiale, the aerospace group. Since 2000, he has sat on EADS’s board.

CHRISTIAN STREIFF, 51, the new head of Airbus, is a novice in the aircraft industry, having spent almost all of his career with Saint-Gobain, the French glassmaker.

M Streiff speaks German and knows German business culture — two advantages in the political minefields of Airbus and EADS. “We know him and we appreciate him,” a source in DaimlerChrysler, EADS’s German investor, said.

M Streiff’s background ought to help him to avoid the errors of EADS’s outgoing joint chief executive, Noël Forgeard, who riled German colleagues with his intransigently Gallic ways.

Born in Sarrebourg, France, near the German border, M Streiff joined Saint-Gobain in 1979 as a piping engineer in its German division. He was head of the group’s Vetrotex Deutschland factory from 1985 to 1991, and wrote a novel set against the background of German reunification.

In 2001 M Streiff was made Saint-Gobain’s managing director. He was tipped to succeed Jean-Louis Beffa as chairman but left the company last year.

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