Seven current and former managers of aeroplane manufacturer Airbus have gone on trial in Paris on charges of insider trading, along with two companies, German carmaker Daimler and French conglomerate Lagardere.
The court will look at what the two companies and the executives knew about technical problems with the Airbus A380 superjumbo when they disposed of shares in EADS, as the Airbus Group was previously known, in 2006.
The problems caused delivery of the A380 to be delayed by at least six months, affecting the group's results.
At the time, Daimler and Lagardere were shareholders in EADS. Among the Airbus executives on trial are Airbus sales boss John Leahy and former EADS co-chief executive Noel Forgeard.
The French financial markets regulator cleared the parties of insider trading in 2009, but the case has nonetheless come to court as part of a separate criminal investigation.
Airbus Group has expressed support for the accused managers and dismissed the allegations as "groundless".
The defendants' lawyers have said they will argue that trying the accused on the same charges as those examined by the regulator violates a European ban on double jeopardy, or being tried for the same offence twice.
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