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Home News Archive Honeywell Aerospace Loses CEO and CFO

Honeywell Aerospace Loses CEO and CFO

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First SolarOn Sept. 3, 2009 New Jersey-based Honeywell International reported that two highly placed executives were departing its Aerospace unit.  Rob Gillette (Aerospace CEO) left to take the helm of First Solar, a multi-billion dollar manufacturer of solar and photovoltaic modules.  Like Honeywell Aerospace, First Solar is based in Arizona.  Mr. Gillette will be replaced by Tim Mahoney, formerly Chief Technology Officer.  In the same release, Honeywell announced the departure of Aerospace CFO, Bob Hau, who will be joining Lennox International, a Texas-based manufacturer of heating and cooling equipment, as its CFO.

Why did the two depart the successful Aerospace unit?  At $11 billion in annual sales, the Aerospace unit accounted for roughly 34% of total Honeywell International sales, but also accounted for nearly half of the conglomerate's bottom-line earnings, according to The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch column.  Aviation Week quotes a Wall Street analyst as saying, "Opportunities for further promotion at Honeywell were limited in the medium-term."  The analyst notes that the departures allow each executive to "step into full CEO and CFO roles."  In other words, each of the executives had hit their ceiling at Honeywell.  No matter how talented or what results they created, there was no room at the top for them.

Assuming this explanation can be taken at face-value, it seems a shame that the Corporate compensation committee couldn't have found a creative way to retain these two executives.  Given the current economic pressures and potential Aerospace/Defense industry downturn, one would have thought Honeywell International would need all the talent it could find, and would not be able to easily replace these two executives.

 

Newsflash

Effective January 1, 2019, Nick Sanders has been named as Editor of two reference books published by LexisNexis. The first book is Matthew Bender’s Accounting for Government Contracts: The Federal Acquisition Regulation. The second book is Matthew Bender’s Accounting for Government Contracts: The Cost Accounting Standards. Nick replaces Darrell Oyer, who has edited those books for many years.