Noel Forgeard, the controversial French co-chief executive of EADS, has been silenced by two of his biggest shareholders as mounting tensions inside the Franco-German aerospace company threaten to destabilise further its troubled Airbus subsidiary.
This week the markets reacted very negatively when it was disclosed the Airbus A380 or "superjumbo" could be delayed.
Arnaud Lagardère and Manfred Bischoff, the group's co-chairmen who represent French and German interests in EADS, ordered Mr Forgeard to stop giving interviews after he spoke on French radio yesterday morning to refute questions over recent share disposals.
His comments on the causes of the group's disastrous profit warning this week, which wiped €5 billion off EADS's market value, have prompted outrage at Toulouse-based Airbus and its German factories.
The chairmen's decision to gag the chief executive, as well as a barely supportive statement from Mr Lagardère in an interview in the French paper Le Monde this week, are likely to fuel speculation that Mr Forgeard could be forced out after an internal inquiry into who is to blame for the problems at Airbus.
However, under EADS's delicately crafted Franco-German governance structure only the group's French shareholders - the government and the Lagardère media conglomerate with a total 22.5 per cent - can replace the French chief executive.
Yesterday, Jacques Chirac, the French president, appeared to support his former industry adviser by saying he was confident the problems at Airbus would be resolved.
Although Mr Forgeard is looking increasingly isolated inside the group, with Tom Enders, his German co-chief executive, taking a greater interest in the problems at Airbus, people inside the group said he was unlikely to go in the near future.
"I am not convinced there will be an earthquake," said a senior company insider. "An earthquake would just add to the crisis."
In the interview, Mr Forgeard attributed blame for costly delays to the group's A380 airline project to both French and German factories but said there had been "quite a big concentration of problems at Hamburg".
He also said "of the whole leadership team, I am certainly the one who has sweated the most blood to define solutions since the beginning of this crisis".
His comments have inflamed the tense relationship between management at EADS and Airbus.
