Ex-finance minister tells Senate he "knew nothing" of EADS trading

The French Senate was trying to clear up Friday whether the state was involved in insider trading at aerospace giant EADS by questioning former finance minister Thierry Breton. The senators are looking into possible insider trading by major shareholders Lagardere and DaimlerChrysler, which both have ties to the state, in April 2006 shortly before the company made its initial public offering. Breton told the Senate finance commission that he had no information about the circumstances of the sale and only later heard of problems with the Airbus A380 mega-jumbo airliner, media reports said. State holding company APE was also denying at the hearing that it had been informed about delays in delivering the A380 during the time in question in 2006. It was "slanderous" to claim that APE recommended that the state purchase EADS shares "on the basis of information that wasn't shared with the market," APE chief Bruno Bezard told the hearing. APE sent Breton a note on January 20, 2006 about a possible sale of shares, but did not comment on difficulties with the A380 programme. The state first learned of the problems on May 18, and then only in an "extremely faulty" manner. Lagardere sold 7.5 per cent of its shares in EADS at that time in three blocks, netting billions in profit. State bank CDC bought the shares to maintain the national balance in the Franco-German company. Senator and CDC board representative Philippe Marini accused the Senate of schizophrenia because it allowed CDC to buy an initial 2.5- per-cent block of shares, for which a 180-million-euro (253-million- dollar) loss provision had been set aside. The formally independent bank was forced to march to the state's drumbeat, he was quoted in Friday's Figaro newspaper as saying. Breton denied having recommended CDC's purchase of the EADS shares. dpa hn wjh ds