Proxy adviser Glass Lewis urges vote against Boeing CEO

Influential proxy adviser Glass Lewis & Co. is recommending Boeing Co. shareholders vote against the reelection of three directors, including Chief Executive Officer Dave Calhoun, due to “significant concerns” about oversight of the planemaker’s safety culture.

Besides Calhoun, who has already said he will step down this year, Glass Lewis opposes Akhil Johri and David Joyce, according to a new report from the advisory firm. Johri, a director since 2020, chairs Boeing’s audit committee, and Joyce, who joined the board in 2021, heads the aerospace safety committee.

Voting against the trio would “strongly signal dissatisfaction with the company’s oversight of its safety culture and its efforts to transform said culture, which, in our view, have not progressed quickly enough,” Glass Lewis said.

Boeing declined to comment on the Glass Lewis report. The company has taken several recent steps to bolster safety and quality, and changed its executive compensation plans to improve focus on those areas.

“While we have made progress in strengthening our safety management and quality control systems and processes in the last few years, recent events make it absolutely clear that we have more work to do and must improve every day,” Boeing Chairman Steve Mollenkopf said in a recent letter to shareholders.

Boeing has been under intense scrutiny from regulators, airlines, lawmakers and the flying public since a near-catastrophic accident in January when a panel blew out of the side of an Alaska Airlines plane mid-flight. Boeing has slowed output of new aircraft amid reviews of manufacturing quality.

Calhoun said last month that he would step down this year, while Chairman Larry Kellner was replaced by Mollenkopf and Stan Deal stepped down as head of the commercial airplane division.

The shareholder meeting is scheduled for May 17.