What happened at CIRRUS?

DULUTH, Minn., Sept. 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ – Cirrus Aircraft today announced that Co-Founder Dale Klapmeier has been named Chief Executive Officer. Brent Wouters, previously President and Chief Executive Officer, is no longer with the company.

Hi Bill,

Don’t know. Maybe normal reshuffling after a “merger?”

I was in the Cirrus booth at Oshkosh when Brent asked one of the employees to “go tell Dale I want him here”. Dale was only 12 feet away at the time, sitting on the step.

Not an expert in interpersonal psychology, but my immediate reaction was: these two don’t work well together.

Guessing the New Owners decided to pick A or B and move forward.

Maybe some of the old family philosophy will now return? Did anyone really like Bret?

It would be my guess that Brent’s post-buyout departure was a foregone conclusion, part of the plan and understood by all the players. Brent was Arcapita’s pointman, placed there by Arcapita to shepherd the company through difficult financial times and engineer Arcapita’s exit. I doubt whether he would have been interested in any Cirrus position in an ongoing way. My supposition is that he did very well financially in the buyout with everyone’s blessing and everyone knew he would be going home. Further, I would suppose that Arcapita is happy with the job he did for them and may well have another assignment for him – if he needs or wants one.

I fully agree with you.

+1