- After about six years in the position
- Accolades and praise for Adamczyk
- Vimal Kapur taking over
- Adamczyk will remain as Executive Chairman at Honeywell
- Adamczyk made a lengthy statement and said 421 words
(exechange) — Charlotte, North Carolina, March 14, 2023 — Darius Adamczyk, chief executive of Honeywell, leaves his position. As announced by Honeywell International Inc. in a news release and in a regulatory filing published on Tuesday, March 14, 2023, Darius Adamczyk leaves his post as chief executive officer at the industrial company, after about six years in the role, effective June 1, 2023.
The average tenure of CEOs who announced their departure over the past 12 months was 8.1 years. This is according to data collected by CEO-exit research firm exechange.
exechange tracks CEO departures at the 3,000 largest publicly traded companies in the U.S., examines the reasons CEOs leave and determines the Push‑out Score™, a measure of pressure on departing chief executives on a scale of 0 to 10.
Darius Adamczyk’s duties as CEO will be taken over by Vimal Kapur, currently President and Chief Operating Officer at Honeywell International Inc.
Darius Adamczyk’s move coincides with a management shake-up also involving the position of President and CEO of HBT.
“Seamless leadership transition”
The management change is explained as follows. Honeywell stated: “These moves ensure a seamless leadership transition and position Honeywell for continued outperformance versus peers.”
The top three reasons cited in corporate announcements for CEO departures over the past 12 months are performance issues (26.9% of cases), implementation of a planned succession (16.8%) and the statement that the time was right for a change (9.5%), according to exechange data. Other motives given for leadership changes included the outgoing CEO’s wish to pursue other opportunities (5.5% of cases), personal reasons (3.7%) and conduct issues (2.1%). Rather rarely stated reasons are career change (2.1% of cases), health problems (1.5%), disagreement (1.2%), death (1.2%) and the desire for more time with family (0.9%). Sometimes, more than one reason was given. In 28.4% of cases, no reason was given.
Adamczyk will remain as Executive Chairman at Honeywell
Honeywell stated: “Adamczyk, who became Chief Operating Officer in 2016, Chief Executive Officer in 2017 and Chairman in 2018, will continue to serve as Executive Chairman of Honeywell.”
Honeywell said: “Vimal Kapur, President and Chief Operating Officer, will succeed Darius Adamczyk as Chief Executive Officer on June 1, 2023.”
Share price increase since March 2017
The announcement follows an increase in Honeywell International Inc.’s share price of 58% since March 2017. March 2017 is the month in which Adamczyk’s tenure as CEO began.
In the position of CEO since 2017
Darius Adamczyk became CEO of the Company in 2017.
In his role as Executive Chairman, Adamczyk will be focused primarily on supporting customer relationships, business development, enterprise strategic planning, shaping the portfolio and global government relations.
Darius Adamczyk is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Honeywell.
Before being elected Chairman in 2018 and named President and CEO in 2017, Darius Adamczyk served as President and Chief Operating Officer.
His focus in these roles has been on accelerating Honeywell’s organic growth, expanding margins, creating a premier technology company, deploying capital effectively and building a high-performance culture.
He joined Honeywell in 2008 when Metrologic, where he was Chief Executive Officer, was acquired.
He served as President of Honeywell’s Scanning and Mobility business for four years, doubling the size of the business, before leading a turnaround over two years as President of Process Solutions.
In 2014, Darius Adamczyk was promoted to President and Chief Executive Officer of Honeywell Performance Materials and Technologies.
Before joining Honeywell, Darius Adamczyk held several leadership positions with Ingersoll Rand and Booz Allen Hamilton.
He began his career as an electrical engineer at General Electric in 1988.
Born in Poland on February 8, 1966, Darius Adamczyk emigrated to the United States at age 11.
He earned his MBA from Harvard University, a master’s degree in computer engineering from Syracuse University, and a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Michigan State University.
Darius Adamczyk is Vice Chair of the U.S.-China Business Council, a member of the Business Roundtable Board of Directors and a member of the Business Council and Aspen Economic Strategy Group.
In addition, he was elected to the Board of Directors for Johnson & Johnson in 2022.
421 words by Darius Adamczyk
In the news release announcing his departure as CEO of Honeywell International Inc., Darius Adamczyk received accolades and praise.
In announcing the leadership change, Darius Adamczyk made a lengthy statement and said 421 words.
“Executing with rigor”
Darius Adamczyk stated: “Vimal is absolutely the right person to lead our company to the next level of growth and stellar performance. Vimal brings 34 years of deep knowledge about our businesses, end markets and customer needs. His ability to drive our key sustainability and digitalization strategic initiatives, along with his advancement of our world class operating system – Honeywell Accelerator – throughout the organization, gives him an outstanding platform to drive continued outperformance for our shareowners. Honeywell’s next operational evolution, under Vimal’s leadership, will be the incorporation of Accelerator and standardization of global business models to enable maximal performance in each business segment. Vimal is also uniquely capable to drive Honeywell’s sustainable innovation and solidify our position to lead in the energy transition. Now more than ever, our customers need our solutions to help their businesses be more efficient and more sustainable, and under Vimal’s leadership, Honeywell’s sustainability technologies will help our customers achieve their goals, today and into the future. In his role as COO, Vimal has driven continued operational execution on our proven value creation framework, all of which is underpinned by Accelerator. We have also made significant strides in advancing our digital solutions – both to enhance our own internal operations and decision-making and in support of our customers to benefit their digitization transformations. The rigor of our digital solutions is a real differentiator for Honeywell and will enable us to achieve consistent and sustained outperformance. Vimal has demonstrated that he can nimbly evolve business strategies to fit any circumstances – and we have seen that most dramatically in the challenges of the last few years. He is technically and analytically strong with a bias for results and gets the most out of people and processes. In his role as President and Chief Operating Officer, Vimal has enabled our businesses to develop new solutions to help our customers drive their sustainability transformations and accelerate their digital capability. Vimal has a depth of operating experience that is unparalleled at Honeywell, having operated across our multiple business models, industries, regions and business cycles during his 34 years at Honeywell, including leading Performance Materials and Technologies (PMT) and Honeywell Building Technologies (HBT), and now in his COO role. He brings a high degree of energy and excitement about what the future holds – from our innovation and breakthrough initiatives to our digitalization rigor and agile decision-making to our portfolio optimization. Our board and I have the utmost confidence that Vimal will be an outstanding CEO, leading our strategic plans and executing with rigor against our profitable growth plans.”
Over the past 12 months, 25% of all outgoing CEOs remained silent in the departure announcement, according to data compiled by exechange. Departing CEOs who did make a statement said an average of 109 words. The longest statement was 510 words. The shortest statement was 23 words. Leadership transitions in which departing CEOs provide conspicuously short, excessively long or no explanations for their move are statistically associated with elevated pressure and show an increased incidence of Push-out Scores above the critical threshold of 5.
38% of CEOs are forced out or fired
When CEO departures are announced, exechange determines the Push-out Score on a scale of 0 to 10 to assess how likely it is that the chief executive was pushed out or felt pressure to leave the position, with 0 being most likely a voluntary move and 10 being most likely a forced exit. Anything over a 5 indicates that there are valid reasons to believe an executive may have been pushed out.
Of the 327 CEO departures in the Russell 3000 Index evaluated over the past 12 months (March 14, 2022, to March 13, 2023), the average Push-out Score was 5.9, according to exechange data. References to conduct issues, disagreements and irregularities lead to the highest Push-out Scores. When performance issues, time with family or personal reasons were cited as departure reasons, the average Push-out Scores were also significantly elevated.
Around 38% of the CEO departure events from the past 12 months received Push-out Scores of 8 or higher.
In other words, in the past 12 months, three in eight departing CEOs were forced out or fired.
Push-out Score for Darius Adamczyk’s move determined
The Push-out Score regarding Darius Adamczyk’s move is explained point by point in the exechange report.
exechange reached out to Honeywell and offered the company the opportunity to comment on the score.
Read the full story in the exechange report 12.2023 ($).