In early December Thatcher had two "ad hoc" meetings with Heseltine, Brittan, Tebbit, William Whitelaw (Deputy Prime Minister), Geoffrey Howe (Foreign Secretary) and Nigel Lawson (Chancellor of the Exchequer) on 5 and 6 December. Brittan argued that the NADs' opposition should be set aside, but Howe and Tebbit were not unsympathetic to Heseltine's proposed consortium, and the decision was deferred to the Cabinet Economic Affairs Committee (E(A)) on Monday 9 December 1985. Cuckney and a Westland financial adviser were invited to attend the E(A) meeting. Cuckney said that it was the management's view that the Sikorsky option was the best one. A majority of the E(A) meeting agreed to dismiss the NADs' opposition. Thatcher, who complained that three hours had been spent discussing a company with a market capitalisation of only £30m (a tiny amount in government terms), allowed Heseltine until 4 pm on Friday 13 December to submit a viable proposal for a European deal. He did (with British Aerospace and GEC now part of his consortium), but Westland's directors rejected it and chose Sikorsky. Heseltine had expected that there would be a second meeting of E(A) to discuss his consortium, but no such meeting was called; Thatcher later claimed that the Monday meeting had agreed to leave the decision to Westland to take, but it later emerged that Ridley and Lord Young placed such a meeting in their diaries and had been told by Number Ten that it had been cancelled. Heseltine threatened resignation for the first time.