Sir Janus; Face value: Sir Richard Evans, the aerospace industry's Janus.(Business)(Sir Richard Evans, chairman of BAE Systems, is an aerospace boss destined to face two ways as his company grows outside Europe)(Brief Article)

Economist (US), The, December, 2000

NOBODY likes being called two-faced, but Sir Richard Evans, boss of BAE Systems (formerly British Aerospace) has to live with it. His European partners often suspect him of leaning towards their rivals in America, while the Americans, for their part, do not much like foreign firms acting as the lead company on big defence contracts.

Sir Richard is determined to face both ways. Since he finalised two deals in November to buy parts of Lockheed Martin, BAE has become the world's largest defence group, if ranked by defence sales alone (see chart), though Boeing outranks it if defence and aerospace sales are combined. This scale has come largely from expansion in America: BAE now sells more to the American government than to the British and makes wing parts for most...

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