Boeing has agreed to pay Embraer $150 million to settle a long-running dispute over the circumstances in which the U.S. aerospace group backed out of a $4.2 billion deal to buy an 80% stake in the Brazilian airframer’s commercial airliner business. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing late on Monday, Embraer confirmed the resolution of an arbitration process it initiated on April 27, 2020.
Embraer and Boeing announced the planned master transaction agreement in July 2018. In October 2019, the European Commission launched an anti-trust investigation into the takeover, prompting a delay that spilled over into the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020.
On April 25, 2020, Boeing confirmed that it was withdrawing from the deal after the terms had expired the previous day, stating that Embraer had not agreed to terms that could have extended the process. Embraer issued a firm rebuttal of Boeing’s statement, accusing the U.S. company of engaging “in a systematic pattern and repeated violations” of the agreement.
Over the past four years, Embraer has pursued a revamped strategy based on producing aircraft for the commercial air transport, business aviation, and defense sectors. It has also targeted the emerging advanced air mobility market through eVTOL aircraft developer Eve Air Mobility, which was spawned from its technology incubator unit.