City profile

Brother Robert Wotypka

A holy row is brewing at Boeing, says Claire Bushey in the FT. Just before Easter, a group of “friars and nuns” filed a resolution with US regulators to force the troubled US aircraft-maker to become more transparent about its “lobbying practices”, in the wake of two crashes that killed a total of 346 people in 2018 and 2019. Now, they’re hoping to attract support from other big investors. The push by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility – “a shifting coalition of religious orders” controlling $400bn in assets – is being led by a Wisconsin friar, Robert Wotypka, whose Detroitbased Capuchin order has owned Boeing stock for more than two decades. Wotypka has been gunning for more openness at Boeing for years and hopes the time has finally come. Either way, “I am praying for endurance, which in the long term a shareholder has to do”.

Catholic orders cut their teeth in shareholder activism in the 1970s, when they advocated disinvestment from companies in apartheid-era South Africa. Since then, many have become prominent activists. An analysis by law firm Sullivan & Cromwell last year found that “two of the ten most prolific filers” of US shareholder proposals were “the Sisters of Saint Francis and the investment arm of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas”. In Brother Robert, Boeing has certainly met its match. A selfconfessed “Av geek” (or aviation trainspotter), he “can name his favourite plane seat” (two rows behind business) and his “favourite jet” (Boeing’s 747 for its “billowy ride”). Buckle-up for a spot of turbulence at Boeing’s AGM at the end of the month.