Every company goes through transitions and sometimes they are easy and sometimes there are many changes. The easy ones tend to be when the company is making profits and continues to make profits, the changes is when the company needs to make profits for it has been stumbling. If a large company is stumbling, everyone in the company knows something is wrong and it will take a large effort to turnout the company. One such example is Boeing.

In an article by Abhijith Ganapavaram and Allison Lampert of Reuters, Boeing announced it had selected a new CEO by naming Kelly Ortberg. Mr. Ortberg has been in aerospace for over 30 years working for Rockwell Collins and United Technologies/RTX or he is an outsider to Boeing. One of many tasks Mr. Ortberg had was to integrate the $8.3 billion acquisition Collins made of BE Aerospace.

As an outsider, the Board of Directors did not choose an insider such as Patrick Shanahan, the former Spirit Aero CEO and others who was seen by many analysts as a possible successor to succeed Mr. Calhoun. Which means among the many tasks as CEO is to ensure the executive team works together or bring in new people to solve the reputational and safety crisis Boeing has been facing with its Max planes. How well he does this will be seen in the next few months – will people in the executive team be replaced or find new jobs in the aerospace industry?

Linking to dividend paying stocks, on the investor side everyone would like to see a seamless transition, when you are dealing with people that does not happen automatically. When a person is appointed to an executive position, for the most part they are considered part of the team who could replace the CEO. All teams work in similar fashion which is why there are many movies about teams and some of them do not work, others do and investors need to ask does this team work to ensure profits are delivered?

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.