737 Max $25 billion hit to Boeing "Biggest corporate blunder ever"
IIRC using full flaps on the 727 came out of fashion.
X Boeing CEO Daniel Muileberg got a 60 Million dollar + severance package after the company imploded on his watch. Funny how there never seems to be any consequences for senior management when they totally screw the pooch......
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Within AM radio broadcast range of downtown Chicago
Age: 71
Posts: 849
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Ex-CEO Dennis Muilenburg's severance pay and benefits were all set by his executive employment agreement, I think it's safe to say. But, indulging the "R" in R&N for a moment . . .
Suppose the Board took the position, when it ousted Dennis, that one of the typically very narrow grounds for terminating his contract "for cause" existed, which would have been sufficient legally to withhold the severance package. Doing that would have required a capacity, on the Board's part, to take him on in a courtroom (and pre-trial discovery before courtroom proceedings) and make the case, with actual evidence, that his acts or omissions were within the meaning of "for cause" in his contract. The higher the executive rank, the narrower the meaning of "for cause", too. (Yes, this SLF/atty is saying this based on practice experience.)
But terminating Dennis "for cause" would have meant that Boeing was then . . . litigating against itself. It had not yet resigned itself to being almost totally, perhaps utterly, unable to control events any longer. So while it still was in "damage control" mode, to a great extent anyway, before criminal inquiries and Congressional committee investigators and crash victim lawsuits and a potential class action suit by customer airlines' pilots and a suit by SWAPA and another by flight attendants, and oh yeah the FAA return to service process, and review panels, and all the other CAAs globally involved, it also would be trying to prove what role in wrongdoing its CEO had played. I don't think it was the appearance of throwing him under the bus that stopped the company from doing this. Rather, it was the necessity of defining what the company, through the CEO, had done wrong in the first place (again, by act or omission, either way).
If there had been what a colleague of mine used to call a "practical labor lawyer" around, maybe Boeing could have tried offering Dennis a quite modest part of the severance package, and a "wait-and-see" stand-still agreement, and only later assessed what role he had actually played in what wrongdoing would eventually surface. Although, Big Business hires gold-plated credentials in its general counsel offices, not practical-oriented minds.
Suppose the Board took the position, when it ousted Dennis, that one of the typically very narrow grounds for terminating his contract "for cause" existed, which would have been sufficient legally to withhold the severance package. Doing that would have required a capacity, on the Board's part, to take him on in a courtroom (and pre-trial discovery before courtroom proceedings) and make the case, with actual evidence, that his acts or omissions were within the meaning of "for cause" in his contract. The higher the executive rank, the narrower the meaning of "for cause", too. (Yes, this SLF/atty is saying this based on practice experience.)
But terminating Dennis "for cause" would have meant that Boeing was then . . . litigating against itself. It had not yet resigned itself to being almost totally, perhaps utterly, unable to control events any longer. So while it still was in "damage control" mode, to a great extent anyway, before criminal inquiries and Congressional committee investigators and crash victim lawsuits and a potential class action suit by customer airlines' pilots and a suit by SWAPA and another by flight attendants, and oh yeah the FAA return to service process, and review panels, and all the other CAAs globally involved, it also would be trying to prove what role in wrongdoing its CEO had played. I don't think it was the appearance of throwing him under the bus that stopped the company from doing this. Rather, it was the necessity of defining what the company, through the CEO, had done wrong in the first place (again, by act or omission, either way).
If there had been what a colleague of mine used to call a "practical labor lawyer" around, maybe Boeing could have tried offering Dennis a quite modest part of the severance package, and a "wait-and-see" stand-still agreement, and only later assessed what role he had actually played in what wrongdoing would eventually surface. Although, Big Business hires gold-plated credentials in its general counsel offices, not practical-oriented minds.
WR 6-3.
I get the "what is" vs "what should be" will never change, but it still rankles that CEO get all the benefits but have no accountability for the consequences of their decisions. Especially where in this case the company culture of do everything fast and cheap and the quarterly stock price is the only metric that matters, came directly from the top....
Since you are a legal expert would you care to further comment on potential criminal liability for Boeing execs ?
I get the "what is" vs "what should be" will never change, but it still rankles that CEO get all the benefits but have no accountability for the consequences of their decisions. Especially where in this case the company culture of do everything fast and cheap and the quarterly stock price is the only metric that matters, came directly from the top....
Since you are a legal expert would you care to further comment on potential criminal liability for Boeing execs ?
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Within AM radio broadcast range of downtown Chicago
Age: 71
Posts: 849
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Potential criminal liability is a difficult call (and it's tempting to say my case resume doesn't have any criminal defense or prosecution experience on it, but that would be unSLF-like to say). It stands to reason that gross, deliberate misrepresentations (and maybe misstatements when it was legally required to report accurately) within the FAA certification process are a part of what the reportedly ongoing DOJ investigators are looking at, maybe the main part. There have been criminal prosecutions against corporate defendants for somewhat parallel misdeeds; on the other hand, neither WorldCom nor Enron were major defense and aerospace contractors, with major export trade balance impact, so . . . The fact, though, that the investigations appear to be still open, even after FAA okayed return-to-service, suggests decisions to prosecute yet could be made.
If I had to pick between being labeled authoritative or an expert, I'll go with the former every time. Based on, having experience yields reliability and a kind of professional sincerity that is more valued (or should be, anyway) than "expertise", which can be too easily manipulated. I'm saying this, because experience tells me that the CEO is nearly as much an agent as a principal - the direction of the enterprise was set by its Board. Which reflects and represents the major investors, institutional and otherwise. So seeing the CEO walk with riches - isn't it somewhat akin to the college football or basketball coach who earnestly tells recruiting prospects in their parents' living rooms that Coach will stay at the College for the next foreseeable years - then Coach leaves abruptly for the Much Bigger Bucks. CEOs can be expected to be moneyhogs, not saying it's "right" but it makes sense that it works out that way. Boards of Directors, though . . ..
When the Boeing saga this time around (after the KC-46 scandal, last time around) was peaking, didn't the Board either add some polished-resume personages from the nuclear Navy, or assign then-current Directors with that background more safety oversight and management roles? But like a big CVN it - the Company - doesn't turn quickly. Just ask the Starliner software crew. So yes, the bean-counter mentality rose to the very uppermost, topmost management and ownership ranks of the company - not just persons, minds also.
Still going in reverse order, what about CEO accountability? Well, didn't a lot of the staff cuts and anti-union moves happen while Dennis was CEO? - and so perhaps a way to change corporate practice in big and important companies is not so much the all-the-rage stakeholder capitalism....perhaps the better way - because it can realistically be effective - is to work to undo the missteps of the discredited CEO. Reopen the NLRB files, take another look at the issues with the 787 plant in S.C. And insist on another look, a lot more publicly, at the move of all production to S.C. - particularly after what to a non-engineer SLF looked like serious fuselage section joining problems. A discredited CEO can have a lot of bank account but if a lot of what he or she got paid to do gets taken back apart and discredited along with his or her name, maybe that is a roadmap to better CEO minds getting there, in the next term of years.
I still think the 727 was the best airplane ever to fly on, because I flew on 727s a lot as a youngster and teen and even into early adult years so that's a whole lot of salt to granularize.
If I had to pick between being labeled authoritative or an expert, I'll go with the former every time. Based on, having experience yields reliability and a kind of professional sincerity that is more valued (or should be, anyway) than "expertise", which can be too easily manipulated. I'm saying this, because experience tells me that the CEO is nearly as much an agent as a principal - the direction of the enterprise was set by its Board. Which reflects and represents the major investors, institutional and otherwise. So seeing the CEO walk with riches - isn't it somewhat akin to the college football or basketball coach who earnestly tells recruiting prospects in their parents' living rooms that Coach will stay at the College for the next foreseeable years - then Coach leaves abruptly for the Much Bigger Bucks. CEOs can be expected to be moneyhogs, not saying it's "right" but it makes sense that it works out that way. Boards of Directors, though . . ..
When the Boeing saga this time around (after the KC-46 scandal, last time around) was peaking, didn't the Board either add some polished-resume personages from the nuclear Navy, or assign then-current Directors with that background more safety oversight and management roles? But like a big CVN it - the Company - doesn't turn quickly. Just ask the Starliner software crew. So yes, the bean-counter mentality rose to the very uppermost, topmost management and ownership ranks of the company - not just persons, minds also.
Still going in reverse order, what about CEO accountability? Well, didn't a lot of the staff cuts and anti-union moves happen while Dennis was CEO? - and so perhaps a way to change corporate practice in big and important companies is not so much the all-the-rage stakeholder capitalism....perhaps the better way - because it can realistically be effective - is to work to undo the missteps of the discredited CEO. Reopen the NLRB files, take another look at the issues with the 787 plant in S.C. And insist on another look, a lot more publicly, at the move of all production to S.C. - particularly after what to a non-engineer SLF looked like serious fuselage section joining problems. A discredited CEO can have a lot of bank account but if a lot of what he or she got paid to do gets taken back apart and discredited along with his or her name, maybe that is a roadmap to better CEO minds getting there, in the next term of years.
I still think the 727 was the best airplane ever to fly on, because I flew on 727s a lot as a youngster and teen and even into early adult years so that's a whole lot of salt to granularize.
Slippery_Pete
Best synopsis of the B737 I've seen in a long time and brings me back to my B737 (4+5) course many years ago when I had a penny drop moment when the instructor explained that it was basically a 737-200 with a load of add ons sitting on top.
Best synopsis of the B737 I've seen in a long time and brings me back to my B737 (4+5) course many years ago when I had a penny drop moment when the instructor explained that it was basically a 737-200 with a load of add ons sitting on top.
