MBDA
MBDA is a missile developer and manufacturer with operations in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
1996 The consolidation of Europe's missile companies began, when parts of Matra Defense and BAe Dynamics merged their missile activities to form Matra BAe Dynamics (MBD). Matra BAe Dynamics represented half of Matra Hautes Technologies' missile business, the other half was Matra Missiles which became Aérospatiale-Matra Missiles (AMM).
1998 GEC-Marconi Radar and Defence Systems and Alenia Difesa combined their missile and radar activities to form Alenia Marconi Systems (AMS).
1999 GEC-Marconi (renamed Marconi Electronic Systems) was sold to British Aerospace and became part of the merged company, BAE Systems
1999 Matra group merged with Aérospatiale.
2000 Aérospatiale-Matra became part of EADS.
2001 MBDA was formed by a merger of Aérospatiale-Matra Missiles (of EADS, now Airbus Group), Italian Alenia Marconi Systems (of Finmeccanica) and British Matra BAe Dynamics (of BAE Systems).
In 2003 the company had 10,000 employees