Chicago- Days after Boeing Co. Chief Executive Harry Stonecipher was ousted from the Chicago-based aerospace giant for having an affair with a female employee, his wife filed for divorce.
Joan Stonecipher, in a brief interview from the couple’s St. Petersburg, Fla., home, said she was stunned by the events of the last week.
“I’m just as blown away by this as everybody else,” she said, then hung up.
In a six-page filing in Cook County Circuit Court, Mrs. Stonecipher said the couple has irreconcilable differences. She listed her occupation as housewife and said she lacks income to support herself or pay attorney’s fees.
The couple owns a $1.8 million home on the water in St. Petersburg and a $675,000 condo nearby, according to county property records. The couple married in 1955 in Rossville, Ga., the divorce filing said.
A Boeing spokesman said Stonecipher, 68, declined to comment on the filing. While in Chicago, he has lived in a condo off the Magnificent Mile.
Boeing hired Stonecipher as CEO in December 2003 after his predecessor, Philip Condit, resigned amid a scandal over a $23 billion deal to supply refueling tankers to the Air Force.
Stonecipher returned to the company from retirement specifically to restore Boeing’s reputation and get the company back on track after several years of sputtering performance.
But in January, Stonecipher began an affair with a female executive, according to the company. Stonecipher admitted the relationship after an employee intercepted correspondence between the two and the matter was brought to the attention of the company’s top ethics officer, non-executive chairman Lewis Platt said on Monday.
The board found that he had violated Boeing’s code of conduct, which Stonecipher championed amid the company’s ongoing defense contracting scandal.
“It was a judgment call about a violation of the code of conduct,” Platt said.
On Thursday, the same day the divorce papers were filed, Boeing disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission that Stonecipher would receive the $2.1 million bonus he had earned in 2004.
He also will be paid through his official retirement date of April 1 at an annual rate of $1.5 million, the same rate he was paid before the scandal.