Boeing Co. is for the first time considering its interim CEO James Bell as full-time chief executive, though the odds are still against it, the U.S. aircraft maker’s chairman said on Wednesday.
“We’re not ruling him out but saying it’s unlikely,” said Lew Platt at a news conference at the Paris Air Show. “Clearly he’s already much more in my mind today than he was three months ago.”
Bell was temporarily elevated to CEO from chief financial officer in March after veteran aerospace executive Harry Stonecipher was fired after an affair with a female executive. He has won good reviews in the job so far.
“He could be considered today,” said Platt, himself a former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. “Three months ago we would have thought that highly unlikely.”
Platt also said that Alan Mulally, the head of Boeing’s booming commercial jet unit and James Albaugh, who leads its defense unit, were both still on a short list of 5 or 6 candidates for the job.
The ability to lead a large company “over some sustained period of time” remains a key qualification for the job, a criteria on which Bell still falls short, having only had the job for three months, he added.
Platt said Boeing had not offered the job to anyone inside or outside the company, adding that “a lot of things would have to go wrong” for the decision to be delayed until December as some press reports have said it could. REUTERS
