Engine maker Rolls-Royce shares fall after pulling out of Turkish fighter jet bid
Rolls-Royce shares fell two per cent on Monday morning after announcing over the weekend it had scaled back attempts to join a programme to build a new Turkish fighter jet.
The engine manufacturing giant had been in talks with Turkey’s Kale Group, but they ran into problems last year because of a dispute over the sharing of intellectual property and the potential involvement of a Qatari-Turkish company.
Read more: Rolls-Royce turbulence finally nearing an end
The firm said it had abandoned its efforts to win the bid for the fifth-generation fighter jet after both sides failed to find a compromise.
The news, first reported on Sunday by the Financial Times, comes hot on the heels of last week’s announcement Rolls-Royce was also pulling out of bidding to supply engines for Boeing’s new midsize plane model because it could not meet the timetable.
That came alongside reporting an annual loss of £2.9bn for 2018, driven in part by long-running mechanical problems which have grounded one of British Airways’ new Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets at Heathrow airport for nearly a year.
Read more: Rolls-Royce profits hit by jumbo jet engine charges
Virgin Atlantic, Air New Zealand, Thai Airways and Latam planes have also been kept out of the sky because of the issue with firm’s Trent 1000 engine model, which ultimately cost the manufacturer £790m last year.
In 2017, Kale Group said it would set up a joint venture with Rolls-Royce to develop aircraft engines after the UK and Turkey signed a defence deal worth more than £100m to develop Turkish fighter jets.