Biography|Dinesh Paliwal — Named Harman CEO From This Pennsylvania Avenue Office

Harman's letterhead in the spring of 2007 still said Washington.

The principal executive office in the 2007 annual report is 1101 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., Suite 1010, the Evening Star Building on the avenue between the White House and the Capitol.

On 9 May 2007 the company announced that Dinesh Paliwal would become president, chief executive, and vice chairman, effective 1 July 2007.

He would join the board the same day.

Sidney Harman, the founder, had been sitting as interim CEO since 1 January 2007 after a planned buyout by KKR and Goldman Sachs began to wobble.

Paliwal was 49 and still listed as president of global markets and technology at ABB in Zurich when the news went out.

Twenty-two years at ABB, including the dual job of president of ABB Group and chairman and CEO of ABB North America, was the resume the search firm Spencer Stuart put in front of the board.

He started on 1 July.

The KKR-Goldman merger later collapsed. Paliwal stayed.

On 1 July 2008 he succeeded Sidney Harman as chairman.

This suite was never going to be the long-term headquarters under the new chief.

He had already opened a corporate presence in Stamford when he arrived, and within a year the Pennsylvania Avenue floor would be folded into that Connecticut tower.

The Evening Star Building is still on the avenue.

Harman's brass is not.

Photo: AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (Evening Star Building, 1101 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, 2008).

Photo: Dshewch, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (portrait, 2009).