By Markus Wacket and Alexander H\u00fcbner<\/p>\n
BERLIN, May 20 (Reuters) – Germany will acquire a 40% stake in Franco-German defence equipment group KNDS when it lists on the stock market, a German official said \u200con Wednesday, matching the size of France’s stake in the maker of the Leopard tank.<\/p>\n
Both governments would \u200cbe expected to reduce their stakes to 30% over the next two to three years, but both would hold equal voting rights regardless of \u200bthe size of each stake, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
The agreement followed weeks of negotiations between the two governments over KNDS, now jointly owned by the French government and the German family owners of the former Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW). KMW was merged with France’s Nexter into KNDS.<\/p>\n
The families aim to divest their entire stake via an initial \u200cpublic offering in Frankfurt, expected in June \u2060or July, that could value KNDS at around 20 billion euros ($23.26 billion), sources familiar with the deal told Reuters this month.<\/p>\n
The price of the stake acquired by Germany would depend \u2060on the market price, with no premium or discount, the official said.<\/p>\n
KNDS chairman Tom Enders welcomed the decision but said a combined level of state ownership at 80% could be “only the beginning” and said national security interests could be guaranteed by contracts \u200band \u200bspecific agreements.<\/p>\n
“The goal must be to significantly reduce the state’s \u200bstake over time,” he said in a statement. “In \u200cthe long run, defence companies generally do not need majority state shareholders.”<\/p>\n
He said KNDS also had to ensure it adopted a governance structure and rules of engagement suitable for the stock market, which would underpin the company’s strengths and support further European consolidation.<\/p>\n
European defence dealmaking has come into sharp focus as relations with the U.S. have frayed under President Donald Trump. The continent has scrambled to rebuild militaries which had been allowed to wither after the Cold \u200cWar ended.<\/p>\n
KNDS, which manufactures the Leopard and Leclerc XLR main battle \u200btanks as well as Boxer armoured personnel carriers and tracked artillery vehicles \u200band ammunition, employs around 11,000 people and generated \u200bsales of 3.8 billion euros in 2024.<\/p>\n
Germany, which has lifted borrowing limits and set aside \u200cbillions to re-equip its military, has been keen \u200bto ensure equal sway over \u200bKNDS with France to ensure it could retain influence over major decisions on issues like jobs or production sites.<\/p>\n
The two countries have been deadlocked over a 100 billion euro project to develop a future combat \u200baircraft system intended to be built around \u200ca core fighter jet supported by drones and linked by a classified “combat cloud”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Markus Wacket and Alexander H\u00fcbner BERLIN, May 20 (Reuters) – Germany will acquire a 40% stake in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[20946,16351,20945,5,3842,3633],"class_list":["post-17117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-defence-equipment","tag-european-defence","tag-german-official","tag-germany","tag-knds","tag-stock-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}