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.
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