The two bosses want to replace the current arrangements which give effective joint control to three shareholders - Lagardere, the French state, and German industrial group Daimler, which owns 22.5% of the company.

BBC: Tom Enders

Mr Cabral has also been busily soliciting foreign investment to add to the deal that his predecessor signed with ThyssenKrupp, a German industrial group, to build a steel mill that is due to be the biggest foreign investment in Latin America.

ECONOMIST: Brazil

Now, there is even more anger in Germany over French attempts to stop Siemens, the German industrial giant, buying parts of Alstom, the near-bankrupt French engineering group.

ECONOMIST: Franco-German relations