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Long-term trends in global CEO turnover
The covid-19 pandemic transformed trends in CEO turnover. As it brought new risks to organizations throughout 2020, the number of CEO departures fell each quarter. And the trend continued alongside the pandemic in 2021, with turnover rates sitting at a relatively low 8%.
In 2022, as countries moved past the pandemic, organizations seemed to regain their risk appetite and global CEO turnover reached a five-year high of 10%.
In the first quarter of 2023, it seems the pandemic-induced turmoil has settled. With just 35 CEOs leaving their posts. We’ve never seen lower turnover rates in Q1.
Methodology
We collected the quantitative data from eleven different global market indices from various publicly available sources. We update the data quarterly, based on the most recent index compositions. We’ve based our industry classifications on those provided by S&P CapitalIQ.
We used the date of a CEO’s departure from their role as a measurement of CEO turnover and analysed the data on the assumption that the departure of an incumbent CEO would result in the appointment of a new CEO. We did not consider Interim, Acting or Designate CEO roles. We used the role departure date to determine the year and quarter in which the transition happened.