Raytheon Co., the No. 4 U.S. military contractor, said Dan Burnham will
step down as chief executive for personal reasons on July 1 and
will be succeeded by President William Swanson.
Burnham, 56, will remain non-executive chairman for “months, not years,” he told reporters after the company’s annual meeting.
He joined Raytheon, the maker of the Stinger and Tomahawk
missiles, as president and chief operating officer in July 1998
after leaving the job as vice chairman at AlliedSignal Inc. He was
made chief executive on Dec. 1, 1998.
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“Dan did an adequate job, but I’m happy to see someone with
Bill’s experience taking over,” said Aetna Tashjian, a Raytheon
retiree after 28 years who owns the stock and attended the meeting
in Lexington, Massachusetts, where the company is based.
Swanson, 54, has been with Raytheon for almost 31 years and became president in July. He has been executive vice president of the company and president of Raytheon’s electronic-systems unit.
The board didn’t want Burnham to leave and this was a
personal decision he made, director Warren Rudman said.
“There was never a split on the board about Burnham,”
Rudman told reporters after the meeting. “The board was very
supportive of him.”
Burnham said he has no immediate plans and chose this time to
leave because he had achieved his objective of improving the
company’s performance.
“The company is transformed and doing well,” Burnham told
reporters. “The basis for continued prosperity is in place.”
In the first quarter, the company had net income of
$95 million, or 23 cents, compared with a net loss of
$583 million, or $1.44, a year earlier.
Raytheon’s stock price has fallen 46 percent since Burnham
took over the company. Annual sales fell to $1.67 billion in 2002
from $1.94 billion in 1998, and in November 2002 the company
settled charges with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
that it provided selective access to financial information to some
investors.
Burnham’s pay rose 39 percent to $8.1 million in 2002.
Bloomberg News
