Management: I'll Be the Boss

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The nation's biggest defense contractor, General Dynamics Corp., last week found a man to succeed Frank Pace Jr., 49, as chairman and chief executive. Burdened by a record $425 million development loss from the commercial Convair 880 and 990 jets (TIME, Jan. 5), the company's powerful executive committee some weeks ago launched a search to put "new blood into top management." Last week Pace resigned. Tapped to replace him as chief executive at a salary of $125,000 was Roger Lewis. 50, now a $71,600-a-year executive vice president of Pan American World Airways. A lean, energetic executive, Lewis went from vice-presidencies of Canadair Ltd. (now a GD division) and later Curtiss-Wright Corp. to the Pentagon (as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, 1953-55) and then to Pan Am.

Chicago's Colonel Henry Crown, General Dynamics' largest stockholder, and his colleagues on the executive committee plainly figure that Lewis is aggressive enough to pull together loosely organized General Dynamics. Lewis agrees. Says he crisply: "It's plain that I'll be the boss."