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0 pointsabeppu1y ago0 comments

1. Boeing investors should take a substantial haircut. If those investors subsequently in on new firms, good for them (though initially these new firms may be private). I see no reason they should expect to "get rich" from the investment. The top institutional shareholder is Vanguard whose involvement will have been minimal and whose future behavior is unlikely to change. But Boeing execs whose compensation is largely in stock packages should take a really large hit, and any shareholders who are more apt to be more activist will be more likely to express concern about this kind of conduct sooner.

2. I have to expect that plenty of employees who did not become dead whistle-blowers were not involved in fraud, or poor engineering practices. Certainly a great many long-time Boeing employees expressed concerns about the deterioration of engineering-first culture.

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t_mann1y ago

The investors who got rich through Boeing have cashed in a long time ago. What you're suggesting would be much more interesting to them than Boeing is today. You're basically saying 'this handful of companies is virtually guaranteed to share contracts worth billions per year among them'.

abeppuOP1y ago

> The investors who got rich through Boeing have cashed in a long time ago.

I don't know which investors you mean, and what you mean by "a long time", but I think people that cashed in a long time ago should be able to invest in new firms. Many people say the culture and safety issues at Boeing stems from the McDonnell Douglas merger which was admittedly a generation ago now. But if the estates of Frank Shrontz or Thorton Wilson or the great great grand kids of William Boeing want to invest in a new firm -- good for them? None of them were involved in the period when this fraud occurred, and if they had actually cashed out long ago then they weren't even shareholders in a position to pressure Boeing officers to do anything different.

But there's also no reason they would have any kind of leg up over anyone else in making such an investment today.

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