There may finally be an end to the saga with STX France and Fincantieri.
It originally seemed that Fincantieri would be the majority stakeholder in the French yard that would see everything change over to the Italians. This would be similar to what the Meyer Group did with their new yard in Turku.
The French government stepped in once it realized that there may be French jobs lost to Italians and that Italy will be control the only yard that can construct large French warships.
New reports, while still unconfirmed, seem to suggest that Fincantieri will indeed finally be taking over the yard. The French state will still own just over 34%. Now an Italian-French joint venture called Naval Group will own 10%. That brings potential French total to 44%, quite close to Italian, Fincantieri’s, 50%. The remaining shares are accessible to employees and others involved.
This more even distribution of shares was structures as such in an aim to build a multi-national naval defense firm. Similar to a recently created land based multi-national venture between France’s Alstom and Germany’s Siemens.