Agusta orders set to fall
AgustaWestland, Finmeccanica’s helicopter unit, expects orders to fall to 4 billion euros (£3.55bn) this year from a record 2010, the Italian-British group’s chief executive said.
The order book will show a prevalence of commercial orders over military orders this year, unlike 2010 which was an “exceptional year”, chief executive Bruno Spagnolini said. Total orders peaked at 5.89 billion euros in 2010, from 3.2 billion euros the year before. He added AgustaWestland had taken full control of the American company making the AW609 tiltrotor which had been previously 60 per cent owned by Bell Helicopter.