He had a long climb to the top, but Noel Forgeard's exit from EADS appears to be coming at a dizzying speed -- even faster than the company's sliding stock value. EADS is expected this week to force French co-chief executive Forgeard to step down following recommendations made by the aerospace giant and Airbus parent company's two biggest shareholders.

According to a report in Tuesday's Financial Times, Forgeard's resignation is expected imminently. However, on Tuesday morning EADS said it would delay making any personnel decisions as its two major shareholders -- French media conglomerate Lagardère and German automaker DaimlerChrysler -- continued to negotiate a solution to the biggest crisis the company has faced since its creation in 2000.

Still, the French government and EADS's main shareholders appear to be tightening the screws on the once high-flying executive, with French President Jacques Chirac now even questioning the logic of the company's current management structure. "There are management problems at EADS, with two presidents and two chairman. We're now discussing fixes to the management of EADS," he told the television station France 2 in an interview. Chirac, whose government holds a 15 percent stake in EADS, said he wouldn't prejudge any decision that was made by shareholders to solve the problem. "It is probably that we have to do something and something will be done." However, when asked if Forgeard should quit, Chirac said he didn't want to "prejudge anything."

French EADS manager Forgeard, who manages EADS together with Germany's Thomas Enders, is currently under fire for production delays on subsidiary Airbus's most important product: the new A380 super jumbo jet. Production problems and delays have led to costly Airbus losses that the company has admitted will reach the €2 billion mark.

Criticism of management and share sales

Prior to his promotion to become co-chief executive of EADS last year, Forgeard was the head of Airbus -- and many problems the company is currently experiencing are being blamed on the executive. The A380 fiasco is only one of Forgeard's growing problems. In March, only a few months before the company announced the A380 production delays, Forgeard and his family sold €2.5 million worth of shares in EADS stock. Forgeard has said he was unaware of the problems at the time, but his critics have accused him of insider trading. When the production problems became public on June 13, EADS stock fell a staggering 30 percent.

On Monday, French Finance Minister Thierry Breton said the French government would leave the decision on how to resolve the situation to Lagardère and DaimlerChrysler. A spokesman for Breton said the EADS shareholders met over the weekend to seek a way out of the crisis. According to the spokesperson, Breton hoped a solution could be found within 72 hours.

The French state owns 15 percent of EADS, with Lagardère holding a 7.5 percent stake. As a counterweight, Stuttgart-based DaimlerChrysler holds a 22.5 percent stake. EADS was established in 2000 through the merger of Germany's Dasa, Spain's Casa and France's Aérospatiale. In order to balance power in company decision-making between France and Germany, a complicated structure was created at EADS giving the company two chief executives and chairmen of the board.

Forgeard isn't the only executive under fire in the EADS family for the A380 delays. Airbus' less prominent sales chief, John Leahy, is also being attacked by critics. Internal critics at Airbus claim that the New York-born executive agreed to provide customers with extra features in the new planes several months ago despite the fact that the company had already issued a design freeze on the jets -- meaning no further changes could be made to a plane's configuration. According to critics, these changes forced the company to develop new electrical and cable systems that, in some instances, take several months to deliver.

Company insiders claim Leahy has been blowing smoke recently to cover his own mistakes. One Hamburg Airbus manager claims that, in order to detract from his own responsibility for the delays, Leahy sent a letter to his colleagues in November demanding improvements in the company's lineup of jets –- which he claimed was inferior to competitor Boeing's. Leahy's Nov. 10 letter, sent to both Airbus and EADS senior executives, has been perceived both in Hamburg and in Toulouse as a tactic to deflect attention from his own mistakes. But the letter also indicates that leading employees at both companies may have been aware of the A380 production problems much sooner than they have previously admitted. When asked last week by SPIEGEL, spokespeople for both companies declined to comment. For his part, Leahy claims that customers had made their requests at the appropriate time before the start of production on the A380.