Munich. 03 August 2019. Airbus has announced the appointments of its top administrators at Defence and Space division. Dirk Hoke the CEO of Airbus D&S handpicked his right hand team mates.

Julian Whitehead, who currently serves as Executive Vice-President Finance for the division and is a part of the divisional Executive committee, has now become Executive Vice-President of Global Business and Strategic Programmes, effective 1 October 2019. He will be relieved by Xavier Tardy, also effective 1 October 2019, who is currently working as Head of Business Strategy at Airbus, after this Xavier Tardy will become a member of Division Executive Committee at Airbus Defence and Space.

Julian Whitehead has served as the division’s Executive Vice-President Finance since 2014. Previously, as of 2012, he was working in the same capacity at Cassidian, former Airbus’ defence arm. From 2001 to 2012, Whitehead was Chief Finance Office of MBDA and from 1997 to 2001 woth BAE Systems.

Airbus Defence and Space CEO, Dirk Hoke asserted, “Julian’s appointment underscores our strong commitment towards performance improvement, which is a top priority. We’ve substantially improved our operations and project execution but we are convinced we can – and have to – achieve even better results going forward with upcoming opportunities like the Future Combat Air System and Eurodrone programmes.”

Xavier Tardy is 14 years of experience in the company. Before assuming his present duties, Xavier Tardy was Head of Finance & Controlling Military Aircraft of Airbus between 2013 and 2018, based in Madrid. Prior to that, he served as Chief Financial Officer of Airbus Americas from 2012 to 2013. From 2005 to 2012, Xavier Tardy was Vice-President Controlling and later Senior Vice-President Group Controlling at Airbus Helicopters (formerly Eurocopter). Before joining Airbus, Xavier Tardy among others worked for Eastman Kodak as a financial analyst, Allied Signal (now Honeywell) as a divisional financial controller and for Delphi as Chief Financial Officer of the Aftermarket Europe business.

“With Xavier we have tapped one of our best finance experts in the company to succeed Julian at the helm of our divisional finance organization. I have all confidence in Xavier that he will perform well in his new role and expand on the strong foundation Julian has built over the last five years,” Hoke added.