Airbus owner weighed down by a Hawker

Aerospace and defence group EADS has seen a small fall in profits because of its exposure to struggling US private jet business Hawker Beechcraft.

EADS, which owns Airbus, made a net profit of 309m euros in the third quarter, down 1% from 312m euros the previous year.

It does maintenance work for Hawker and lost 76m euros when the US firm went into bankruptcy protection.

However EADS's revenues for the three months to September were up 15% to 12.3bn euros thanks to a strong performance by Airbus.

Last month, EADS and the UK's BAE Systems called off merger plans with political deadlock between the UK, French and German governments.