Corporate Governance
BAE Systems' chairman is Dick Olver. The executive directors are Ian King (CEO), Linda Hudson, and George Rose. The non-executive directors are Harriet Green, Michael Hartnall, Sir Peter Mason, Carl Symon, Roberto Quarta, Paul Anderson and Nick Rose.
The company's first CEO, John Weston, was forced to resign in 2002 in a boardroom "coup" and was replaced by Mike Turner. The Business reported that Weston was ousted when non-executive directors informed the Chairman that they had lost confidence in him. Further, it was suggested that at least one non-executive director was encouraged to make such a move by the MOD due to the increasingly fractious relationship between BAE and the government. As well as the terms of the Nimrod contract, Weston had fought against the MOD's insistence that one of the first three Type 45 destroyers should be built by VT Group. The Business said he considered this "competition-policy gone mad".
It is understood that Turner had a poor working relationship with senior MOD officials, (for example with former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon) Significantly the first meeting between Olver and Hoon was said to have gone well, a MOD official commented "He is a man we can do business with. We think it is good to be taking a fresh look at things." It has been suggested that relations between Turner and Olver were tense. On 16 October 2007 BAE announced that Mike Turner would retire in August 2008. The Times called his departure plans "abrupt" and a "shock", given previous statements that he wished to retire in 2013 at the age of 65. Despite suggestions that BAE would prefer an American CEO due to the increasing importance of the United States defence market to the company and the opportunity to make a clean break from corruption allegations and investigations related to the Al Yamamah contracts BAE announced on 27 June 2008 that it had selected the company's Chief operating officer Ian King to succeed Turner with effect from 1 September 2008; The Financial Times noted that King's career at Marconi distances him from the British Aerospace-led Al Yamamah project.
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