European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., parent of the world’s largest maker of commercial aircraft, ended seven years of dual management that investors said contributed to estimated profit shortfalls at EADS that may total 4.8 billion euros ($6.6 billion) through 2010.

Louis Gallois, a 63-year-old French national, will become EADS’s sole chief executive officer. Tom Enders, a 48-year-old German who until now has been co-CEO with Gallois, will become head of Airbus, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a Toulouse, France, press conference. Gallois had also run the Airbus unit since October.

Airbus is speeding up decision-making as EADS considers selling shares or bonds to fund the A350 XWB airliner’s 11.5 billion-euro development to challenge Boeing Co.’s 787 Dreamliner and struggles to win back airlines after delays hampered the A380 model. Today’s agreement abandons a July 2000 merger requirement that EADS’s main German and French investors appoint joint chairmen and CEOs.

“It’s still early days at the moment, but the general impression is that with this change, the climate has improved for going to the capital markets rather than going to stakeholders for funding the A350,” said Doug McVitie, managing director of Arran Aerospace, a Dinan, France-based consulting firm.

Shares of EADS in Paris rose 14 cents, or 0.6 percent, to 24.12 euros. The stock is down 7.6 percent this year, valuing the Paris- and Munich-based company at 19.7 billion euros.

Main Owners

EADS was formed in the merger of the French, German and Spanish partners in Airbus. The company is 15 percent owned by France’s government and 7.5 percent by Paris-based publisher Lagardere SCA. Stuttgart, Germany-based DaimlerChrysler AG, the world’s second-biggest maker of luxury cars, owns 15 percent and also controls the votes of a 7.5 percent stake it sold earlier this year to German companies.

The French state’s voting role on strategic issues at EADS is still under discussion, Gallois said in an interview. Lagardere currently controls decisions for the entire French stake, and government officials have pushed for a larger say.

“Two heads can’t be as decisive as one head,” said Zafar Khan, a London-based analyst with Societe Generale with a “sell” recommendation on EADS stock. “We’re very pleased they’ve gone to a single chairman and single CEO.”

A380 Losses

Airbus has a program to cut spending by 2.1 billion euros annually by 2010, eliminating 10,000 jobs and selling or finding partners for six factories. The Toulouse-based company intends to use the savings to help pay for development of the 250- to 350-seat A350, which is scheduled to enter fleets five years later than the Dreamliner’s 2008 commercial debut.

Deliveries of the 555-seat A380 are two years late, leading to a 572 million-euro loss at Airbus in 2006. The plane will cut profits by 4.8 billion euros through 2010, EADS estimated in October. Delays were partly attributed to a lack of communication within Airbus and EADS about the gravity of production problems.

DaimlerChrysler and Sogeade, the holding company of its French partners’ stakes, consider EADS’s financial position “sound and robust,” and foresee “no requirement for an equity injection into the company,” thanks to recent plane orders, the German carmaker said.

Any need to sell shares or debt won’t arise until next year, when engineering costs start to rise, Gallois said in an interview. EADS may not even need to raise further capital because it has other ways of increasing cash flow, including accelerating plane production, he said.

Fifth Airbus Head

Enders will be the fifth person in two years to run Airbus. Noel Forgeard, a Frenchman, left the post in June 2005, and was succeeded by Gustav Humbert, a German. Christian Streiff, a Frenchman, was brought in from outside in July 2006 and lasted three months in the job. Streiff was replaced by Gallois, who took the post alongside his EADS position last October.

The new roles don’t appear to speak to the executives’ strengths, said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of Teal Group, a Fairfax, Virginia-based consulting company.

Enders ran EADS’s military business until becoming co-CEO in June 2005. He also worked for DaimlerChrysler’s aerospace division until it was merged into EADS.

Gallois was chief of France’s state-owned railway, Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais, between 1996 and his appointment as EADS co-CEO in July 2006. Prior to that he was head of Aerospatiale, a French forerunner of EADS, and in the late 1980s he ran Snecma SA, a state-owned engine maker that’s now part of Safran SA.

`Reverse Jobs’

“They’re the right men in the reverse jobs,” Aboulafia said. “Enders seemed ideal for EADS, because he has the broad business and defense background, and Gallois has a history of reforming French institutions, and more of a commercial aerospace background.”

Ruediger Grube will become sole chairman under the new structure, EADS said in a statement.

Gallois said in an interview that the changes will be implemented around Aug. 1 or Sept. 1. The formal handover of power isn’t effective until after shareholders have signed off on it, he said. EADS will call for an exceptional shareholder meeting around late September, he said.

Top positions may be rotated after five years to executives of the other nationality, with Grube possibly being replaced by Arnaud Lagardere, a French national who currently holds the joint chairman’s post with Grube, DaimlerChrysler said in a statement. Arnaud Lagardere remains a board member and will be chairman of Sogeade, Sarkozy said.

Won’t Solve Anything

“I don’t think it’ll solve anything: It’s the same names all over again, and they’re just shifting the cards around,” said Jean Francois Knepper, president of Airbus’s European works council, in a telephone interview after the announcement.

The planemaker’s savings program is “already yielding results and it will deliver the planned results in 2007,” Gallois told reporters in Toulouse today. The company must also prepare for the A350’s introduction as well as a successor “when the time comes” for Airbus’s single-aisle A320 series.

“We don’t need fresh capital so far because our cash position is extremely strong,” Gallois said in an interview. Airbus may seek additional cash once the savings program has achieved goals and only “if we need money.”

Standard & Poor’s said in a statement today that its credit rating and forecast on EADS debt are unaffected by the management changes.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Rothman in Toulouse, France, at aerothman@bloomberg.net ; Francois de Beaupuy in Toulouse, France, via fdebeaupuy@bloomberg.net .

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