Airbus Cancels 50th Anniversary Book After Bribery-Probe Concern

(Bloomberg) -- Airbus SE officially canceled a book commissioned for its 50th anniversary, citing a shift in its ‘‘communication content goals.”

“Airbus acknowledges the quality of the finished manuscript,” the company said in a statement Friday, which was titled ‘‘Airbus: The First 50 Years” and written by ex-New York Times journalist Nicola Clark.

Bloomberg News reported in July that the book was being pulled because senior managers were said to have raised concerns about a chapter that covered ongoing bribery and corruption investigations. The chapter discussed allegations surrounding the use of intermediaries in securing orders that are still under investigation.

Concerns arose that the book’s contents could impact Airbus’s ability to secure a legal settlement in the French and British probes, Reuters reported at the time.

The book was published on Amazon’s Kindle platform on May 29, and taken down before the Paris air show in mid-June, when printed copies were scheduled to be released.

Before pulling the book, Airbus was praised for allowing publication of a warts-and-all history. Aviation website Leeham News wrote in a July 8 review that Airbus had done “a fine job” in letting Clark include coverage of “the two big scandals” concerning the corruption claims and historical insider-trading allegations relating to disclosures about the now-canceled A380 superjumbo.

--With assistance from Siddharth Philip.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Mayes in London at jmayes9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebecca Penty at rpenty@bloomberg.net, Eddie van der Walt, James Amott

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