The Conference Board, in collaboration with Heidrick & Struggles, recently released CEO Succession Practices: 2019 Edition. The report is designed to provide a comprehensive set of benchmarking data and analysis on CEO turnover that can support members of the board of directors and corporate governance professionals in the fulfillment of their succession planning and leadership development responsibilities. It reviews succession event announcements of chief executive officers made at S&P 500 companies in 2018 and the previous 17 years, and it is complemented by results from a 2019 survey of corporate secretaries, general counsel, and investor relations officers on the succession oversight practices of their boards. Drawn from such a review, the following are the key insights for what’s ahead in the field.

CEO Succession Trends (2001–2018)

#MeToo-related departures were a key factor in the 2018 increase of the S&P 500 CEO succession rate. At least five out of 59 registered events of succession (or about 8 percent of the total) were due to misconduct unrelated to financial malfeasance—whether sexual harassment, instances of workplace intimidation or other behaviors the company deemed inconsistent with its core values. They are the dismissals of Martin Anstice at Lam Research, Les Moonves at CBS Corporation, Brian Krzanich at Intel, Brian Crutcher at Texas Instruments, and Steve Wynn at Wynn Resorts. In 2018, those five CEO dismissals related to a #MeToo event represented more than 40 percent of the total number of nonvoluntary departures for that year (12 cases). In comparison, of all CEO successions announced at S&P 500 companies in the 2013-2017 period, only one was attributable to personal conduct unrelated to the company’s operating performance or financial condition (Manuel Rivero of F5 Networks, who resigned in 2015 only after five months on the job).

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