Bell Helicopter CEO John Garrison resigned last night after six years at the helm of the Fort Worth, Texas-based Textron subsidiary. Garrison is leaving to take the reins at Terex Corp., a $7.3 billion global manufacturer of heavy equipment based in Westport, Conn., effective November 2.
He is being replaced at Bell by Mitch Snyder, a senior executive with deep company experience who recently served as Bell's executive vice president for military business. Before joining Bell, Snyder worked in a variety of senior leadership positions at Lockheed Martin in engineering, business and manufacturing.
Garrison led Bell through an overall rejuvenation of the helicopter manufacturer’s culture and a period of dynamic and dramatic transformation that included fixing the troubled 429 light twin and getting it to market; revising and updating legacy models such as the 407 and the 412; and launching new products such as the 525 super medium twin—the largest commercial helicopter Bell has ever built—and new 505 light single, as well as the V-280 next-generation military tiltrotor. He also led an aggressive charge to find new markets for the Bell/Boeing V-22 tiltrotor and oversaw the modernization of Bell’s Fort Worth campus.