Aerospace firm Airbus is reportedly working on an offer to buy the big data and cybersecurity unit of French IT services company Atos.

According to the Financial Times, the companies will announce that Airbus will enter due diligence on its planned offer which would place an enterprise value of between €1.5-1.8 billion on the BDS unit.

Airbus, the report notes, is in the process of expanding its cyber activities while Atos is seeking ways to deal with €2.25 billion in debt that matures in 2025 under recently appointed chair Jean Pierre Mustier.

The talks are not exclusive and other bidders may still make a play for the business, the report adds.

This is not the first time that Airbus and Atos have reportedly been in talks over deals. Last year, Airbus was in discussion over Atos’s Eviden division which contains BDS and its cloud computing business, but this fell through when activist investor Chris Hohn objected to the plan.

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