The process of transforming the Franco- German European Aerospace Defence and Space group (EADS) into a normal company has been slow, arduous and politically fraught. It took a vicious internal power struggle to persuade the core French and German shareholders – Daimler and Lagardère – with their governments to agree a couple of years ago to streamline the company’s cumbersome dual-headed top management and governance structure.

But although the group now has a single chief executive, it is still headquartered in Paris and in Munich and is registered for tax reasons in the Netherlands. So the logical next step would be to do away with the two operational headquarters and concentrate the group in one place, helping to cut administrative costs and rationalising decision-making, while maintaining its fiscally attractive Dutch registration.