Good morning.
Boeing’s board of directors and the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts both took action yesterday to dispense with policy for two special people. Boeing waived its mandatory retirement age of 65 for its newly appointed CEO Kelly Ortberg, as it did when hiring current CEO Dave Calhoun. And Massachusetts state legislators passed an act authorizing the city of Springfield to let its new Police Superintendent Lawrence Akers, who’d otherwise hit retirement age months into the job, work until he’s 70.
With all this recent debate over whether to impose a mandatory retirement age for, say, the president of the United States, it’s a reminder that nobody has this stuff figured out. Ortberg, an industry star as CEO of Rockwell Collins, was a few years into his own retirement when tapped for the gig at Boeing. Now, he joins peers like Disney’s Bob Iger, Target CEO Brian Cornell, 3M CEO Bill Brown, and Chevron’s Mike Wirth in having their companies' retirement rules waived to get them into the top job.
