15 Nov 04. Former Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA – News) Chief Financial Officer Michael Sears pleaded guilty on Monday to one felony count of aiding the illegal hiring of a U.S. Air Force official for a top job at the company. Darleen Druyun, the former No. 2 Air Force weapons buyer, was sentenced last month to nine months in prison for negotiating the $250,000-a-year job at Boeing with Sears while still overseeing Boeing business worth billions of dollars with the Air Force — including a now derailed $23.5 billion proposal to lease and sell the military 100 Boeing 767s. Chicago-based Boeing, the No. 2 U.S. defense contractor, fired Sears and Druyun in November last year. Phil Condit resigned as Boeing chairman and chief executive a week later. The court filings said Sears at least twice advised Druyun to “hang tough” and deny the illegal job talks, even after Boeing and federal prosecutors began investigating the matter. He discussed the possibility of hiring Druyun with the president of Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems and “other members of the company’s senior management” at two high-level meetings in early October 2002 before making an informal offer at a private meeting on Oct. 17, 2002, the filings showed. Sears, 57, faces a jail term of no more than six months under federal sentencing guidelines, although the final decision is up to U.S. District Judge Gerald Lee, and will depend on his cooperation with federal prosecutors. Sears is due to be sentenced on Jan. 21. (Source: Reuters)
15 Nov 04. Honeywell (NYSE: HON – News) today announced that it has acquired Mitsubishi Chemical America’s 40 percent stake in GEM Microelectronics Materials, giving Honeywell sole ownership of the venture, which manufactures chemicals for the semiconductor industry. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. GEM Microelectronics Materials was formed in 2001 when Mitsubishi and Honeywell combined their wet- process chemicals businesses. The business has annual revenues of $40 million. The business’ core competency is its ultra-high purity straight, wet-etch and cleaning chemistries. GEM’s focus on quality is critical to semiconductor manufacturers’ processes especially with wet cleaning chemistries, which are used in nearly every stage of semiconductor production. The business has also recently expanded its product portfolio to include performance cleans, ultra- high selective etchants and wafer-thinning products designed to meet specific customer needs.
17 Nov 04. Lockheed Martin lawyers want to know if a former top Air Force official, recently sentenced to prison, played a role in the awarding of a space-launch services contract that Lockheed claims was tainted by the misuse of trade secrets by a competitor, the Boeing Co. Lawyers for Lockheed Martin Corp. want to depose a Boeing representative about communications between Boeing and Darleen Druyun between January 1995 and October 2004 as part of Lockheed’s civil lawsuit accusing rival Boeing of racketeering and illegally acquiring trade secrets. Druyun was a former top acquisitions officer for the Air Force.U.S. Magistrate Judge Karla Spaulding last week agreed to let Lockheed lawyers question a Boeing representative about communications with Druyun on six contract competitions, including the rocket launch contract known as the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Program, or EELV.
17 Nov 04. Marvin Sambur, the U.S. Air Force’s chief weapons buyer on Wednesday said he was quitting to help free promotions held up in the Senate over a stalled $23.5 billion plan to acquire Boeing Co. KC-767 aerial refueling planes. Marvin Sambur told Reuters he had resigned as assistant secretary for acquisition effective Jan. 20 or sooner, should President Bush’s next choice for the job be confirmed earlier. “It’s becoming pretty apparent that if I stayed it would be very difficult for the Air Force to have anybody confirmed,” he said in a telephone interview. He said he had not decided where he might