Leading US aerospace group Boeing Co on Thursday named 3M Co Chief Executive James McNerney as chairman and CEO, favouring him over candidates inside the company. McNerney, who formerly ran General Electric Co's jet engine division, will succeed Harry Stonecipher, who was ousted as Boeing's CEO in March after he admitted to having an affair with a female Boeing executive.
Shares of Chicago-based Boeing rose 3.6 percent in premarket trading on the Inet electronic brokerage system.
"His experience, relative outsider status and execution track record are a positive for Boeing," Bank of America analyst Nick Fothergill said in a research note.
McNerney, who is slated to start on Friday, will join the top US commercial jet maker and No. 2 defence contractor at a time when its fortunes are recovering from a Pentagon corruption scandal that led to the jailing of its former Chief Financial Officer Mike Sears.
Boeing shares have surged 19 percent this year, boosted by a buoyant outlook for commercial jets in general and strong orders for its composite 787 Dreamliner plane set to begin commercial flights in 2008.
3M, where McNerney is widely credited with overseeing a turnaround after he joined the company in 2001, said it was naming Robert Morrison, a board member and retired vice chairman of PepsiCo Inc, as interim CEO.
Boeing Chief Financial Officer James Bell - Sears' successor - had held the CEO post on an interim basis, but he had never been in contention for the job, Boeing has said.
Bell will stay on in the CFO job, Boeing said.
McNerney, 55, had been seen as a top candidate for the CEO post from the time the position became vacant, but had repeatedly denied interest.
With the appointment of an outsider, Boeing passed over two top internal candidates, Alan Mulally, head of the company's booming commercial jet business, and James Albaugh, who leads its defence unit.
Both men were on a short list of five or six possibilities for the job, Boeing Chairman Lew Platt said during a news conference at the Paris Air Show earlier this month.
Platt will now become lead director at the company founded by William Boeing in 1916 as a seaplane maker.
McNerney is the third CEO in the past two years at Boeing. Stonecipher had come out of retirement to succeed Phil Condit, who resigned in December 2003, a week after Sears was fired.
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