BAE: vivement la quille! (Qu’on devienne US)

Le patron de BAE, Mike Turner, donne une longue interview à Aviation Week (accès payant), pour le numéro spécial (17 juillet) du Salon de Farnborough. Le patron britannique explique que plus vite il ne sera plus britannique, mieux il se portera.

Toute l’interview, avec ces précisions comme point d’orgue, constitue une profession de foi résolument économiste, où les questions de défense (d’industrie de défense) n’ont plus rien à voir ni avec la politique, ni avec la souveraineté, ni avec la nationalité (voir la dernière question de l’extrait ci-dessous) ; c’est de la pure globalisation. L’envie de Mike Turner de devenir US n’a qu’un seul motif, ou plutôt trois, cela fait plus sophistiqué : dollar, dollar & dollar.

Voici quelques questions extraites de l’interview :

« Do you see a day when more than half of BAE's revenues will come from the U.S.?

» Yes. Why would you not want to keep growing in the most important market in the world, where the technology is? There's very good technology in the U.K., but not on the wide scale that it is in the U.S. We will grow to a point hopefully sooner rather than later where we're bigger in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world.

» Sooner being this decade?

» That would be my ambition. It depends on how successful we are in other parts of the world. In the U.K. we are certainly growing our share and our profitability. Saudi Arabia is a really important growth market. If you believe the U.S. and the U.K. [defense budgets] are going to flatten out in the next few years, there are very few growth markets in the world — and Saudi Arabia has got to be a leading one. We've been established there for decades. We have 5,000 people there. Saudi Arabia could become a very big percentage of BAE Systems sales.

» If the U.S. becomes more than half your revenues, could BAE move its headquarters here?

» There could be a point where you'd have to do that, where it would be the natural thing to do. If we got to a point where 60-70% of the company was selling to the U.S. government, it would be quite difficult to remain a U.K.-headquartered company.

» And 60-70% is conceivable?

» I think so. It depends on what happens in the U.K. market with the Defense Industrial Strategy and with Saudi Arabia.

» BAE Systems seems to have perfected the business model of going into another market and becoming an indigenous supplier.

» I believe that's the only way. In the modern world, governments increasingly want high-value jobs for their citizens. Defense is seen as a means, because it's government money, after all, that is buying these systems. You've had offsets for decades, but offsets tended to be at the lower level of technology. Governments are waking up to this. Even the U.K. government is saying that on Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). We want to be seen in the U.S. as a U.S. company, in the U.K. as a U.K. company, and in Australia as an Australian company. About a year ago I was asked to join the prime minister on a trip to Australia to promote U.K. exports to Australia. I said “No, that's wrong.” Because in Australia we've got 3,000 people and we're Australian. I don't want the Australians to think we're a U.K. company. »

Mis en ligne le 19 juillet 2006 à 15H34