Boeing shareholders approve CEO compensation as company faces investigation and possible prosecution

Boeing shareholders on Friday approved CEO David Calhoun’s $32.8 million compensation and heard leaders explain what happened. Troubled aircraft maker The company is improving the quality and safety of its aircraft after a door plug on a Boeing 737 MAX exploded in January.

Calhoun said the company is close to completion Plan for 90 days To fix manufacturing problems – a report required by the FAA after a door plug exploded.

The CEO added that the company is still working to complete the acquisition of the main supplier Air spirit systemsBut he did not set a final date for completion. Spirit makes fuselages for the MAX planes and has been a source of manufacturing defects.

The shareholders’ meeting was held online and was extensively scripted. One moderator asked shareholders a set of questions, which Calhoun and Steven Mollenkopf, the new chairman of Boeing’s board, apparently posed by reading their answers. None of the questions were very pointed.

Shareholders approved an advisory action on executive compensation by a margin of 64%-36% – almost all of them Calhoun wages For 2023 he was in the stock awards — rejecting shareholder resolutions that address topics such as pay gaps for women and people of color, and the company’s ties to China.

All 11 candidates have been approved for Board membership. Calhoun had the second lowest support rating at 78%, and former GE Aviation CEO David Joyce came in last with 67%.

I lost the company More than $23 billion — including $2.2 billion last year — since Calhoun took over as CEO in January 2020, most of it related to a pair of fatal 737 MAX crashes that occurred in Indonesia and Ethiopia while he was on the board but before Become CEO.

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During the day Thursday, shares were down 27% since the door seal incident during an Alaska Airlines flight over Oregon.

“Our CEO took $33 million last year because of the failure,” said James MacRitchie of CorpGov.net, an activist shareholder who filed an unrelated resolution during Friday’s online meeting.

Calhoun announced in March that He will step down At the end of the year. Another shareholder said Calhoun should leave immediately.

Boeing was the subject of multiple investigations after a door plug exploded. It can also be encountered Criminal trial For allegedly violating the terms of a settlement with the Justice Department after the MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019, which killed 346 people. The company has I fell back a lot European competitor Airbus – the world’s other major manufacturer of large passenger aircraft – in sales and deliveries.

Mollenkopf said the coming months and years are crucial “as we take the necessary steps to restore recently lost confidence.”

“The world needs a healthy, safe and successful Boeing, and the board will make sure that’s what it gets,” he said.

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