New Era Coming for Raytheon Executive Suite

摘要

Bill Swanson (left), Raytheon's CEO and chairman, is scheduled to hand over the chief executive's office to current Chief Operating Officer Tom Kennedy on March 31. Swanson will remain chairman at least while the Waltham, Mass.-based defense prime contractor transitions to Kennedy's leadership.Swanson joined Raytheon as a mechanical engineer in 1972 and rose to become CEO in 2003, adding the title of chairman the following year. He became chief executive around the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the beginning of a doubling of annual U.S. defense, homeland security and intelligence spending during the 2000s. During his tenure, Raytheon took numerous approaches on its own that helped turn the company into a genuine prime provider mentioned in the same context as Lockheed Martin and a few others. At the same time, by luck and strategy, Raytheon became well-positioned to meet new warfighting demands in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then again later when federal restrictions such as fixed-price contracts became common as the wars wound down and political gridlock in Washington brought the 2011 Budget Control Act and its annual threat of sequestration cuts.