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CEOs Wanted: Apply Boeing or Airbus
Boeing and Airbus both arrive at the show with a vacancy for CEO. The difference is that one company has too many candidates and the other doesn’t have enough. Outgoing Airbus CEO Noel Forgeard is ready to assume his new place as co-chairman of EADS, but the confirmation of his successor - announced in late May as Airbus chief operating officer Gustav Humbert, who would be the company’s first-ever non-French boss - is still stalled by high-level Franco-German disputes. The French government (and reportedly Forgeard himself) would have rather seen the job go to operations vice-president Gerard Blanc. Forgeard will be leading the company’s team here.
Meanwhile, the palatial top floor suite of 100 N. Riverside Drive in Chicago remains vacant, since CEO Harry Stonecipher resigned in March because of an affair with a Boeing executive. The company has been looking outside for a replacement, so far without success. Some potential candidates - such as GE Transportation leader David Calhoun and his predecessor James McNerney, now CEO of 3M - have said that they are not interested in the job. Boeing’s non-executive chairman, Lewis Platt, is attending the show, and the senior briefers at the show are Integrated Defense Systems CEO Jim Albaugh and Commercial Airplanes CEO Alan Mulally.
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