The Bangladesh Air Force has signed a letter of intent with Leonardo to purchase Eurofighter Typhoon jets as part of an ongoing effort to modernize its existing fleet.
"The agreement was signed yesterday and marks a preliminary step towards initiating discussions," said a military official.
The air force has not disclosed how many of the multirole military aircraft--developed jointly by Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Spain--it intends to acquire.
The move by Bangladesh's interim government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, comes amid a series of significant decisions in the field of aviation.
In July, Bangladesh announced its intention to purchase 25 Boeing aircraft to avoid the 35% import tariff proposed by President Donald Trump. This announcement raised questions about a previous plan to acquire 10 Airbus planes, a commitment made under former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the outcome of which remains uncertain following her ousting.
If finalized, the Typhoon deal would represent Bangladesh's first major purchase of a Western-manufactured combat jet.
There is no official data on the number of aircraft currently operated by the Bangladesh Air Force. Defense analysts estimate the fleet at around 200 aircraft, including nearly 50 fighter jets.
(Translated by Jasmine Mazzarello, edited by Andrea Mandalà)
Mohammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist and entrepreneur. Nicknamed the “banker of poor”, he founded the first microcredit institution, the Grameen Bank. Thanks to this concept he won the Nobel Prize for peace in 2006.
He is the third of fourteen children; he spent the early years in his native village and then his family move to Chittagong, the second city of Bangladesh, where his father opened a jewellery store.
Attended a primary school Lamabazar and Chittagong collegiate school, Yunus was also a boy scout. Thanks to an international boy scouts exchange, he travelled in Europe, Japan, Philippines, Middle East and North America.
In 1957, he obtained a bachelor in economics at Dhaka University, and one year later he got a master in arts. Then he became teacher in economics at Chittagong College.
At 21 years old, he became entrepreneur, establishing the first high-tech factory for packaging and printing of all East Pakistan. The concept was an amazing success but he decided to give the management part to his two brothers in order to move to United States to get a PhD.
After a master at university of Colorado, Yunus started a PhD at Vanderbilt private University in Tennessee. He met his first wife, a young American with Russian origin, Vera Forestenko. They married in 1970, and seven years later they had a daughter called Monica.
In 1980, Yunus divorce and remarried Afrozi Yunus, a professor of physics at Jahangirnagar University, with whom he had a second daughter, Dina Yunus.
After a PhD in economics, he got a job at Middle Tennessee State University. During a liberation war in Bangladesh, Yunus decided to support the separatists.
In 1971, Bangladesh’s independence is proclaimed, and Yunus decided to come back to his Country, leaving his job as university professor. He became head of the economics department of Chittagong University. Against famine, which destroys his country, he decided to focus on the poor life style of villages near to University.
With many students, he created a group of “research and action”, which its first work focused on agricultural issues. The young professor understood that much problems faced by poor farmers are linked to difficulties of access to capital. For this reason Yunus proposed a “micro-loan” (between 30 and 50 dollars) to a few dozen of villages, using his own money.
The effect of these loans is very soon positive on the material situation of the beneficiaries, and without difficulties of reimburse. In 1977 Yunus decided to create his own program, called “Grameen” (means village).
This is an instant success, at first in Bangladesh, where Grammen took bank status in 1983, and in other many countries where the model was exported since 1989.
Leonardo S.p.A. is one of the European leaders in the design, manufacturing and marketing of aerospace defense systems. Net sales break down by family of products as follows:
- defence systems (39.7%): weapons, radars, etc.;
- helicopters (29.5%): civilian and military;
- aeronautical equipment (15.4%): aircraft, etc.;
- space systems (5%);
- aerostructures (3.7%);
- cybersecurity solutions (3.3%);
- other (3.4%).
At the end of 2024, the group had 129 production sites located in Italy (60), the United Kingdom (8), the United States (27) and in other countries (34).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: Italy (18.2%), the United Kingdom (12.3%), Europe (26.4%), the United States (23.2%) and other (19.9%).
This super rating is the result of a weighted average of the rankings based on the following ratings: Global Valuation (Composite), EPS Revisions (4 months), and Visibility (Composite). We recommend that you carefully review the associated descriptions.
Investor
Investor
This super composite rating is the result of a weighted average of the rankings based on the following ratings: Fundamentals (Composite), Global Valuation (Composite), EPS Revisions (1 year), and Visibility (Composite). We recommend that you carefully review the associated descriptions.
Global
Global
This composite rating is the result of an average of the rankings based on the following ratings: Fundamentals (Composite), Valuation (Composite), Financial Estimates Revisions (Composite), Consensus (Composite), and Visibility (Composite). The company must be covered by at least 4 of these 5 ratings for the calculation to be performed. We recommend that you carefully review the associated descriptions.
Quality
Quality
This composite rating is the result of an average of the rankings based on the following ratings: Capital Efficiency (Composite), Quality of Financial Reporting (Composite), and Financial Health (Composite). The company must be covered by at least 2 of these 3 ratings for the calculation to be performed. We recommend that you carefully review the associated descriptions.
