Arlington
Calhoun bails out: It’s no surprise David Calhoun is stepping down as CEO of Boeing at the end of the year, says Jessica Karl on Bloomberg. The man, who took over four years ago to address the crisis at the aircraft maker following a pair of deadly plane crashes, himself presided over incidents in which wheels and door panels “blew off like little dandelion seeds mid-flight”. In early 2020, Boeing should have selected “a fresh pair of eyes” to take over from Dennis Muilenburg. Instead, the company “went with a seasoned director who had been with Boeing since 2009”.
Calhoun’s “‘I’m the new guy’ line got real old, real fast. Now he’s going down, with nothing but a generous ‘golden parachute’ to save him.” It’s true Calhoun hasn’t “chalked up much success” in changing Boeing’s culture, “which had become excessively focused on bean counting at the expense of engineering”, while European rival Airbus has forged ahead, says Jon Sindreu in The Wall Street Journal. Then again, “changing the course of an industrial behemoth… [is a] daunting task… and his recent plans to crack down on quality lapses appeared reasonable”.
It won’t be easy to find a successor. The industry tends to look to insiders. But to sell investors on a “‘new Boeing’, it could be time for outsiders to take over. A fresh perspective can help, even in aerospace”.
Cupertino
DoJ takes a bite out of Apple: The US Department of Justice (DoJ) is suing tech giant Apple for having an illegal monopoly on smartphones, stifling competition from rivals and limiting the choice for consumers. This is the first major competition case against Apple by the Biden administration, which is cracking down on Big Tech to protect consumers from soaring prices. Apple, along with Google’s parent Alphabet and Meta, is also facing a probe by the European Union for allegedly favouring their app stores. Apple was recently fined €1.8bn by the EU for restrictions on its app store for music streaming. The $2.7trn company prevents third-party developers from creating applications that compete with its products, such as its digital wallet, and degrades messages on its iPhone from Android users, according to the lawsuit filed by the DoJ. “Monopolies like Apple’s threaten the free and fair markets upon which our economy is based”, said Merrick Garland (pictured), the US attorney general. In reality, Apple is “not even close” to being a monopoly, as its share of the global smartphone market is roughly 20%,
