It was Anzac Day when President François Hollande got a call from Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull to tell him that France’s DCNS Group had beaten a bid from Germany to win a defense contract worth A$50 billion ($39 billion), reports Bloomberg.
Hollande relayed the news to his defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who had travelled to the Somme in northern France to mark the annual day of remembrance for Australian and New Zealand soldiers who served and died in battle. Le Drian was on the former battlefield at 4 a.m. Monday for the beginning of a ceremony that was broadcast live in Australia.
The turn of events, relayed by two people familiar with the matter, capped an all-out push by France to win the order for 12 submarines, an effort that paid off with the announcement that DCNS had beat a competing bid by Germany’s Thyssenkrupp AG.
With Japan seeming to fade from contention in the past month, the French campaign underscores how the tactics of the two remaining contenders couldn’t have been more different. While France’s bid will culminate in a long-planned state dinner Tuesday night for Australia’s governor-general hosted by Hollande, Germany, by contrast, left the wining and dining to a deputy minister.
Whereas Hollande has unabashedly lobbied on behalf of French arms suppliers, Merkel’s government has been a somewhat silent advocate, preferring to tiptoe around the topic out of concern for a public backlash even with what would have been the largest ever German defense contract on the line.
“The French bring François Hollande and pack a bus full of generals and lawmakers,” Frank Haun, chief executive officer of German tank maker Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, said at a conference last fall in Berlin.
“I come in a Smart and, if I am lucky, I can bring an ambassador.”