DUTCH planemaker Fokker will make an unconditional, definitive bid for
British state-owned aircraft and defence manufacturer Short Brothers
before the April 30 deadline expires, a Fokker board member said
yesterday.
He qualified remarks by a Fokker spokesman on Tuesday that Fokker and
Britain's General Electric Co (GEC) would favour a delay for their final
joint bid.
''The British Government set the rules. There has to be a bid by April
30,'' said Mr Erik-Jan Nederkoorn of Koninklijke Nederlandse
Vliegtuigenfabriek Fokker NV.
Mr Nederkoorn, who is in charge of finance and marketing, said the bid
had to meet certain requirements. '''We and GEC will make a bid that
meets those requirements,'' he added.
The joint Fokker/GEC venture is one of two parties shortlisted by the
Government to bid for the loss-making Belfast firm, with 7700 staff the
largest industrial employer in Northern Ireland.
Canada's Bombardier Inc is the other remaining bidder.
''We would have preferred a later deadline (since) we have to decide
on the expansion of our production capacity for the Fokker-100 within
two or three months,'' Mr Nederkoorn said.
'''Shorts could play a role in that, but now we had to make a decision
on Shorts bid independently of our expansion plans,'' he said.
The Fokker-100 is a 100-seater passenger jetliner for which the firm
now has 212 firm orders and 178 options.
A recent 6.5-billion-guilder order by AMR Corp's American Airlines,
the largest industrial order ever for a Dutch firm, for a total of 150
planes, will keep existing production lines busy until 1995, Mr
Nederkoorn said.
The firm also makes the smaller Fokker-50 turboprop plane.
Mr Nederkoorn decclined to give details of the bid for Shorts.
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