Boeing’s Chairman is Leaving Under a Cloud – So Why Does Exxon Want Him on Their Board? Larry Kellner Departs Following Factory Carelessness, Airline Incidents…But Now The Oil Giant Wants Him On Its Safety Committee!
Falls Church, VA
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May 09, 2024 09:49 AM Eastern Daylight Time
In a case of corporate elitists’ blindness at best, and ineptitude in governance at worst, Exxon Mobil Corporation’s directors have renominated Lawrence “Larry” Kellner, who is also the departing Chairman of the crisis-plagued Boeing Company, to their own board.
Kellner, a former Continental Airlines Chairman/CEO, left the now-defunct (merged with United) company in late 2009 and joined Boeing’s board of directors in 2011. He was elevated to chairman in late 2019, and his tenure has been marked with failures both financial and reputational.
As anyone who follows air travel news knows, Boeing has likely endured the worst year of any U.S.-based corporation due to numerous troubling safety incidents, with the penultimate occurrence in January, when a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines flight at 16,000 feet, imperiling passengers and crew.
In addition to that high-profile episode, Kellner has presided over a cascade of devastating headlines related to Boeing’s quality and safety record. It’s gotten so bad that now every airliner performance glitch, regardless of the responsible party, is now headlined as a “Boeing plane” incident.
Yet, inexplicably, ExxonMobil wants Kellner to serve another year on its board, which he joined in 2023. As a result, National Legal and Policy Center, a shareholder in both Boeing and Exxon, is calling for fellow investors to vote against Kellner for the energy company’s annual meeting on May 29.
“It’s incredible to have to even ask, but after the last five years-plus that Boeing has had, Larry Kellner is properly leaving its board – so why do Exxon directors think he deserves a seat with them?” said Paul Chesser, director of NLPC’s Corporate Integrity Project. “Is this about strong governance to protect shareholder assets, or just keeping the social club together until something catastrophic happens – like what just happened at Boeing?”
Earlier this week NLPC filed a proxy memo with the Securities and Exchange Commission which further explained why it believes Kellner has no business serving on a corporate board at this time, much less the largest U.S.-based energy company in the world. Kellner, along with exiting CEO Dave Calhoun, were supposed to be the leadership pair to improve Boeing’s performance after the firing of previous CEO Dennis Muilenburg. Instead the company’s performance only worsened, with its stock price being almost halved since Kellner took over as Chairman.
NLPC also released a short video on Thursday that highlights Boeing’s mishaps under Kellner’s leadership, and questions why ExxonMobil would want to keep him on its governance team. The oil giant’s board, in exhibiting the ultimate in tone-deafness, even plans to keep Kellner on the company’s safety committee!
“There’s a reason Larry Kellner is leaving Boeing’s board, and that reason is failure,” Chesser added. “Exxon is not in business so it can provide soft landings for mediocre executives. Nonetheless his colleagues put him on the proxy ballot for the board, so our fellow shareholders should do the right thing and vote against him.”
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For more information or to schedule an interview with Paul Chesser, contact Dan Rene at 202-329-8357 or drene@nlpc.org.
Please visit http://www.nlpc.org.
Founded in 1991, the National Legal and Policy Center promotes ethics in public life through research, investigation, education and legal action.
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