in the early 1990s the then airbus ceo jean pierson argued that the gie should be abandoned and airbus established as a conventional company. however, the difficulties of integrating and valuing the assets of four companies, as well as legal issues, delayed the initiative. in december 1998, when it was reported that british aerospace and dasa were close to merging, aérospatiale paralysed negotiations on the airbus conversion; the french company feared the combined bae/dasa, which would own 57.9% of airbus, would dominate the company and it insisted on a 50/50 split. however, the issue was resolved in january 1999 when bae abandoned talks with dasa in favour of merging with marconi electronic systems to become bae systems. then in 2000 three of the four partner companies (daimlerchrysler aerospace, successor to deutsche airbus; aérospatiale-matra, successor to sud-aviation; and casa) merged to form eads, simplifying the process. eads now owned airbus france, airbus deutschland and airbus españa, and thus 80% of airbus industrie. bae systems and eads transferred their production assets to the new company, airbus , in return for shareholdings in that company.