Airbus faces challenges as it enters new era

PARIS: Airbus will draw a line under two decades of M&A dealmaking and frenetic orders on Wednesday as it reports its first results since the European aerospace and defense group unified under its dominant planemaking arm last month.

The sense of Airbus entering a new era is palpable, with the complex reorganization set in motion by the swallowing



of parent Airbus Group (formerly EADS), by the subsidiary it was created to oversee, coinciding with waning demand from airlines.

The company is expected to report a 7 percent drop in full-year core earnings and confirm that orders for new planes this year will drop below the number of jets it delivers for only the second time in 14 years.