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“Joining forces is the only way to face the challenge with the giants born from the idea and means of state-men like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos e Bill Gates who, individually, have wealth greater than the GDP of Greece,” Leonardo’s CEO told “L’Economia del Corriere della Sera”, Roberto Cingolani. “In space, as in defense, small is not beautiful and not even a medium size like ours is enough: European companies must join forces, sacrificing their sovereignty on the small domestic market to compete together on the immense global market. Leonardo is acting as a sherpa in this area and with Rheinmetall we have reached a first historic peak”.
As for the Global Combat Air Programme to build new-generation fighters: “I really think we will sign the agreement by Christmas. Relations were initially tense, but now the programmes of Italy, the United Kingdom and Japan for a sixth-generation fighter have a good chance of converging. By the end of the year we will complete all the new projects, on Gcap and space. We will include them in the update of the industrial plan”. Looking for new alliances also in space: “Within Leonardo the space division has just been created, a premise for intensifying the dialogue with our partners in the Space Alliance. With Thales we have a long history of collaborations that look at technology and programmes. The technical teams of the two companies are working to study how to modify the Space Alliance to improve its efficiency and increase its competitiveness”.
“We are asking ourselves – continues the CEO – how to strengthen what is already there, if new synergies can arise and what the needs of each are. At that point we will decide which priorities are shared by the alliance and which to cultivate independently”. This work could lead to a review of the share weights with Thales in Alenia and Telespazio: “It is possible that this analysis will lead to a change in the shareholding structures, but we are not studying it, if the conditions are right it will arise naturally”.
As for the timing of this industrial and shareholder review: “It is not long: we aim to update our industrial plan at the beginning of 2025. We will probably communicate it to the market between February and March to explain the progress made in our strategy. One chapter will be dedicated specifically to space strategies and one to cybersecurity”. With these objectives: “The space turnover should reach 1.000 billion in 2030, with an annual growth of 6/7 percent, that of cybersecurity will be worth hundreds of billions. They are immense and specialized markets. Therefore, we cannot think of doing everything, but we must perfect our strengths: we have great know-how in satellite services and space exploration which, certainly, will be strategic pillars”, concludes Cingolani.
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© Agenzia Nova – Reproduction reserved