Boeing’s Shareholders Are Complicit in Its Mess
The planemaker may be a protected company, but investors colluded in its poor strategic, financial and operational management.
Airbus is more protected than Boeing, yet it's thriving. The contrast is instructive.
Photographer: M. Scott Brauer/Bloomberg
There are many reasons Boeing Co. has fallen into such disrepair that it needs to sell shares for a potential $19 billion cash injection, and just as many lessons to draw. But one factor arguably underpins them all, and shareholders should be taking a long look in the mirror.
Boeing announced on Monday its plans for the share sale, which it needs to help slash nearly $50 billion of net debt, protect its investment-grade credit rating and, ultimately, lay the financial foundations to build a new plane. The origins of this dire situation go back decades, long predating the fatal crashes of 2018 and 2019 involving the 737 Max. They also extend beyond Boeing’s protected status as one half of a critical duopoly, too big to be taken over and too important to be fully restrained by market and regulatory forces.