Closing summary: Ryanair boss says new Boeing leaders can turn around factory problems
Boeing boss Dave Calhoun will see out 2024 as chief executive, but the judgments on his tenure are already coming in.
Calhoun was shifted from chair to chief executive after the resignation of Dennis Muilenberg, who oversaw the 737 Max crisis. Calhoun had one of the biggest corporate turnaround jobs ever: the reviews so far are mixed.
Michael O’Leary, the combative chief executive of Irish airline Ryanair, has been strongly critical of delays to deliveries under Dave Calhoun. In a video on Ryanair’s website, O’Leary said:
Stan Deal has done a great sales job for Boeing for many years, but he’s not the person to turn around the operation in Seattle, and that’s where most of the problems have been in recent years.
We welcome and look forward to working with Stephanie Pope […] to eliminate Boeing’s delivery delays both for summer 2024 and in the autumn of 2024. So hopefully we’ll have no delivery delays for summer 2025.
Timothy Hubbard, assistant professor of management at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, said Calhoun’s departure was “a long time coming”. He said:
The embattled leader has struggled to rebuild confidence in Boeing’s products following years of design and manufacturing issues. This is an industry that cannot tolerate mistakes. Boeing is in deep need of a change in culture around safety and quality. These changes take time, but can be accelerated by new leadership.
Justin Green, partner at Kreindler & Kreindler, a law firm representing 34 families who lost relatives on Ethiopian Flight 302, said it was positive that Calhoun has stepped down:
The next CEO must know that his or her role will be to prioritize safety, not just profit. While we are pleased to see that serious and immediate personnel changes are being made at Boeing in the wake of recent and troubling safety issues, Boeing must be fully transparent in every change it plans to make with regard to its manufacturing and quality control processes. For too long, Boeing has been avoiding public accountability and these leadership changes open a window for the company to do so.
In other business news:
Apple, Google’s parent company and Meta are being investigated by the EU for potential breaches of the bloc’s new laws designed to police anti-competitive behaviour by big technology companies.
The former chief executive of Chelsea, once described as “the most powerful woman in football”, is facing questions about what she knew of secret payments made under the club’s former owner Roman Abramovich, amid an ongoing investigation into alleged breaches of football spending rules.
Nissan is planning to cut the costs of manufacturing electric vehicles by nearly a third by 2030, as it seeks to compete with Chinese rivals.
The owner of Legoland, Alton Towers and Madame Tussauds is planning to introduce budget airline-style surge pricing, so families will pay more on peak summer weekends than rainy weekdays, as visitor numbers have fallen since the pandemic.
You can continue to follow our live coverage from around the world:
In our coverage of the Israel-Gaza crisis, the UN security council passes resolution calling for immediate ceasefire, as US abstains
In UK politics, Sunak insists the UK has ‘very strong’ capabilities to resist cyber-attacks after government urged to end China ‘naivety’
In our coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war, Macron tells Russia it would be ‘cynical’ to use Moscow concert hall attack to turn people against Ukraine
In US politics, Donald Trump is in court for hush money hearing as deadline looms to pay $454m fraud trial bond
Thank you for reading today, and please do join us for more live coverage of business, economics and financial markets tomorrow. JJ
Updated
Worrying news in the week before Easter: cocoa prices are soaring.
The price of a ton of cocoa topped $9,000 on futures markets. Bloomberg News points out that that is more than a ton of copper – for the first time since 2003.
Bloomberg reports:
Poor harvests on the back of bad weather and crop disease in West African growers, where most of the world’s cocoa is grown, and little sign of production relief elsewhere have left the industry in a bind.
The price increase is too late to affect this year’s Easter eggs, but it will affect chocolate prices over the course of the year.
But prices are already high. The Guardian’s intrepid money editor, Hillary Osborne, found that Lindt’s gold-wrapped bunny is the priciest Easter treat – with rising cocoa costs an important factor.
Cocoa has become something of a speculative asset: it has outperformed bitcoin in the last 12 months.
The race continues...#Bitcoin is up a 'modest' 237% in the last 12 months.#Cocoa is up 310% and #NVIDIA 350%.
— Sean Gibson (@seaninfinance) March 25, 2024
Source: Bloomberg, Jeroen Blokland pic.twitter.com/6dPlEg9qPq
