New boss a stubborn veteran of crisis
Beleaguered Boeing Co is putting its future in an industrial veteran who has led several companies in crisis, began his career at engine maker General Electric Co and has already spent a decade on the board of the world’s largest planemaker.
Newly-named chief executive David Calhoun, 62, was made Boeing’s chairman two months ago, in the midst of the crisis that has rocked the company since two fatal crashes led to the grounding of its 737 MAX.
It was not his first experience of navigating corporate upheaval. Calhoun became chairman of the Caterpillar Inc board shortly after federal agents raided its headquarters in March 2017, headed a General Electric division that included airplane engines after the Sept 11 attacks, and led media research company Nielsen Holdings Plc’s effort to go public. He has also been a long-time executive at Blackstone Group Inc, a private equity group.
“Having seen him run GE’s aviation business after 9/11, I know he can execute under pressure,” former GE chief executive
Jeff Immelt told Reuters by e-mail when asked about Calhoun, adding that Calhoun would restore customer trust in Boeing.
Calhoun, who has cowritten a book on business,
How Companies Win, says being candid is part of being a leader, an approach which many critics say was absent from Boeing’s initially guarded approach to concerns about the 737 MAX.
“The second you get into the office till the second you leave, every interaction is judged,” he said in a video published in 2014 by the Jack Welch Management Institute. “You try to hide anything from everybody and I think your body language becomes perfectly apparent.”
Now, Calhoun must repair frayed relations with regulators, continue to manage a cash squeeze from the crisis and bring to market the new 777X jet at a time of tough regulatory scrutiny.
“His experience on the Boeing board will allow Calhoun to take the reins in short order without the need for a longer period of familiarisation,” said Timm Schulze-Melander, industrials specialist at European research house Redburn (Europe)
Limited.
He also will have to face sceptics that Boeing can change, including Paul Njoroge, a Toronto-based investment professional, who lost his family in an Ethiopia Airlines crash on March 10.
“Boeing needs a revamp of its corporate governance. The board should be fired,” he said, adding of Calhoun, “I don’t think he is going to change the culture of Boeing.”
Others are less sure. “He is a ‘hardnosed’ leader who does not warm to dissent but who can inspire,’’ said an executive who worked for him at Nielsen.
“(Boeing) might need someone as tough as Dave. I don’t think he would be a good manager over a long period of time. As a crisis manager, he might be able to get it done,” the person said.
Another executive who has encountered him called him even-handed and smart.