President Putin has been kind to BAE Systems. When the first Russian boot trod Ukrainian soil on February 22 last year, the armaments company’s shares were changing hands for 600p. They reached £10.32 this April, having been tipped here at 724p a week after hostilities began and at 821p last October.
However, in the past eight weeks they have suffered their first real setback since the pandemic, sinking by 104p to 928p before recovering a little. All seasoned military opinion suggests the conflict has some way to run, possibly years, and Nato countries are becoming emboldened to send Ukraine the sort of increasingly sophisticated hardware and ammunition that are BAE specialities. So why the doubts?
The group employs 93,000 people in 40 countries, providing some
