Krauss-Maffei Wegmann – Nexter: A Rapid Integration as the Key for a Real Marriage

The merger between Nexter and Krauss‐Maffei‐Wegmann, announced in 2014 and finalized in 2015, is of particular importance, which the French and the German, and generally all European countries, must be aware of. The consolidation process of the European defence industry ‐ initiated in the 1990s with a joint letter from the President of France, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Chancellor of Germany, calling for the creation of a common aeronautical and defence company, with the OCCAR agreement signed in 1996 and the Letter of Intent (LoI) agreement in 2000 ‐ was motivated by two reasons. The first one was the reduction of defence budgets after the Cold War that did not allow maintaining the European defence industrial structure as it was, for it was affected with overcapacities. The companies needed to regroup, as was the case in the United States from 1993. In 1996, Bae Dynamics and Matra merged into Matra Bae Dynamics. Later, in 1999, Alenia missiles joined Matra Bae Dynamics. The new name of the company was MBDA. In 1999, Aérospatiale‐Matra, DASA and Casa merged to form EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space company). In the UK and in Italy, mergers took place, around Finmeccanica, now named Leonardo, and BAE Systems, in order to constitute two major defence companies ranked in the top ten of the global defence industry. In Germany the consolidation around DASA took place even sooner, by the end of the 1980s, and in the land armament industry there was an attempt to merge KMW and Rheinmetall…