Boeing to pay $200m to settle SEC investigation over 737 Max

Bloomberg

Boeing Co agreed to pay $200 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allegations that the company and its former CEO Dennis Muilenburg failed to disclose safety issues with its 737 Max jetliner, resolving one of the final US investigations related to two crashes that killed 346 people.
The settlement, announced by the SEC, concludes a probe into whether Boeing withheld key information from shareholders about a flawed software system linked to the 2018 and 2019 crashes. The SEC said the company and its former CEO violated securities laws by making “materially misleading” statements.
Without admitting or denying the findings, Boeing and Muilenburg agreed to pay $200 million and $1 million, respectively, to settle the allegations.
“We have made broad and deep changes across our company in response to those accidents—fundamental changes that have strengthened our safety processes and oversight of safety issues, and have enhanced our culture of safety, quality, and transparency,” Boeing said, referring to the two 737 Max crashes. Muilenburg didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Boeing shares were little changed this week. The stock has declined 31% so far this year.
The twin tragedies prompted one of the longest groundings in aviation history. Boeing previously paid a $243.3 million fine as part of a $2.5 billion settlement with the US Justice
Department to end a criminal investigation in January 2021.
The SEC probe centerd on
repeated assurances by Muilenburg that the company’s engineers had followed its safety practices in designing a software system, triggered by a single point of failure.