"The civil litigation is what the Boeing execs must be most worried about." (Big Pistons Forever)
Having a little insight on Boeing's legal challenges prompts me to say that the senior execs are worried at least as much, if not more, about the criminal investigations which are still open (at last report). They've also got to be quite immersed (to put it nicely) in the on-going efforts to get the airplane back into airworthiness status, customer acceptance and deliveries, and scheduled service (as it slowly returns, hopefully, with progress against pandemic issues). That having been said, the Board of Directors could very likely be emphasizing more of the long-term picture, about financial intactness and possible threats of bankruptcy, as to which your prediction unfortunately could turn out to be correct.
But I think it won't be. I have an NDA to observe scrupulously. So I will say in general terms only that the financial impacts, at the worst-case level, from much of the pending civil litigation is not as open-ended as the misdeeds (again putting things nicely) by Boeing in the certification debacle would suggest exists. For one thing, litigation where much of the factual picture is undisputed can work out a lot like an axiom cocktail waitresses often recite: time is money and money is time. The Boeing defense attorneys are, shall we say, quite adept at stringing things out, a prime example being the motion to transfer cases out of Illinois - a standard aviation liability defense move but also one that slows things down and sometimes significantly.
Result: faced with an alternative of interminable waiting, settlement can be induced at lesser amounts than the catastrophic levels presumably motivating such dire predictions. In this context the I.G. report appears to place large portions of the factual case out of disputed reach, prompting defense counsel to rely even more on running a delay playbook, which does tend to induce settlements.
Whether the corporate role fulfilled by the "current" Boeing is foundational to U.S. national security interests as well as the fundamental soundness of the global civil aviation system is less of a lawyer point; probably a planeload of MBAs with spreadsheet apps all over their devices would be needed to crunch financials. But such a focus on financials is at the root of this debacle, and so predictions of so-called existential peril for the once-proud plane-maker might yet turn out to be all too valid.
As for effectiveness of reform efforts, when senior people from both parties and in both House and Senate on the committees with the primary jurisdiction agree broadly on what will be changed and needs to be changed, then even though I don't think a prediction, as such, should be made . . . it does appear that a discernible sobriety about the matters at hand has intruded upon the Hill. And if there is a view that Administrator Dickson is not "for real", then I don't share it.