EADS seeks disposals more than buys in defense, space review

European aerospace group EADS will focus more on selling assets to simplify its business than on acquisitions as it reviews its defense and space activities, the sales chief of its Cassidian defense unit said.

EADS announced in July it would combine its defense and space subsidiaries and rename the group after its Airbus aircraft making brand, starting from January 1. The restructuring is due to be completed by July 2014.

The units are now undergoing a portfolio review and the group could sell out of activities that are "small and easily segregated from the rest," Christian Scherer, Cassidian's chief sales officer, said on Wednesday.

"If anything it should result in a simplification of what we do and not add complexity by adding other activities. We're not going on a buying spree," he told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday at the sidelines of a defense conference in London.

EADS's strategy chief Marwan Lahoud had said on Tuesday that there could be both disposals and acquisitions as part of the move to a single defense-space division.

Scherer declined to specify which activities might be sold, but said Cassidian's main core business was military aerospace and that units such as cyber security, which had potential for growth, were key to the business.

"Cassidian does everything from small radar modules all the way up to fighter airplanes and large border control projects, we have thousands of products," he said.

"We just want to be more effective on the export market, we want to be able to integrate some very adjacent business segments that we have."

(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Anthony Barker)