Taming the Many Masters at EADS

Tom Enders, the former German paratrooper who has led Airbus since 2007, loves to make a splash. To show off his military skills he once skydived off a plane’s loading ramp at 10,000 feet. His disapproval of Germany’s absence from the Libyan liberation campaign led Enders to quit Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party. And last year he quipped that Boeing executives might be a bunch of dope-heads.

That bluntness risks putting Enders on a collision course with his government shareholders. In May, Enders will move up to become chief executive officer of Airbus parent European Aeronautic, Defence & Space, an aerospace company partially owned by the governments of Germany, France, and Spain. His challenge will be to rationalize a diverse collection of aviation and defense assets stitched together a decade ago, while keeping his state investors happy. “He’s a straight talker who sometimes ruffles feathers, and he needs to be like that, to steer a ship between politics and a very complex business,” says Michael Fuchs, the chief economy parliamentary spokesman for Merkel’s political party.