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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Alex Lawson

‘I’m not profiting from misery. I’m averting more’ – Thales’s UK boss on making missiles for Ukraine

Portrait of Alex Cresswell against a blue background
‘There’s a discussion which is absent because of 40 years of peace,’ Alex Cresswell says about defence spending. Photograph: Handout

For a “ferocious remainer”, Alex Cresswell is remarkably proud of his blue passport. For some, the dark rectangle on his office table is a sad symbol of Britain’s departure from the EU. But while the Thales UK boss describes watching the Brexit squabbles in Westminster from his decade-long posting at the company’s Paris HQ as “excruciating”, he smiles at the travel document.

His aerospace-to-defence-and-security business is four years into a Home Office contract to produce the passports, after Gemalto (acquired by Thales) undercut the furious incumbent, De La Rue, to win the contract.

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