Lockheed Hunts for CFO After Ken Possenriede’s Sudden Exit

Pentagon’s biggest defense contractor Lockheed Martin reported on Tuesday chief economic officer Ken Possenriede is retiring right away “due to personal reasons” and named a organization veteran as an interim substitution.

What Happened: The maker of F-35 fighter jets named John Mollard, the existing vice president and treasurer, to fill in briefly as a substitution for Ken Possenriede, one more organization veteran who was top the CFO function at Lockheed considering that February 2019. 

Possenriede, sixty, has spent in excess of three many years with Lockheed in many roles together with as vice president and treasurer. His unexpected exit arrives two days ahead of the company’s scheduled investor working day on Thursday and following a rare pass up on quarterly earnings previous week.

Possenriede’s unexpected exit was not associated to any “financial or accounting situation or any disagreement with the organization or any make a difference relating to the company’s operations, guidelines, or techniques,” Lockheed reported in a Securities and Trade Commission submitting on Tuesday.

Why It Matters: The hunt for a new CFO arrives following a year Lockheed navigated by means of the world-wide pandemic that strike the defense industry difficult with shutdowns, shortages, and months of delays. 

A draft of the 2022 defense spending plan indicates the U.S. defense industry could get a expending enhance of $25 billion under President Joe Biden as the Pentagon looks to retire more mature weapons plans in favor of more recent technologies.

Rate Action: Lockheed shares closed .31% higher at $369.forty five on Tuesday and had been down .8% in prolonged several hours. 

This story originally appeared on Benzinga. © 2021 Benzinga.com.

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