The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu The leading online blog in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. Thu, 04 Jun 2026 11:32:46 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cropped-photography-4-e1706898544564-1-32x32.png CEO Succession Practices in the Russell 3000 and S&P 500 2021 Edition – The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu 32 32 CEO Succession Practices in the Russell 3000 and S&P 500 2021 Edition https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2021/07/07/ceo-succession-practices-in-the-russell-3000-and-sp-500-2021-edition/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ceo-succession-practices-in-the-russell-3000-and-sp-500-2021-edition https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2021/07/07/ceo-succession-practices-in-the-russell-3000-and-sp-500-2021-edition/#comments Wed, 07 Jul 2021 12:57:06 +0000 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/?p=138845?d=20210707085706EDT Posted by Matteo Tonello (The Conference Board, Inc.), Jason D. Schloetzer (Georgetown University), and Francine McKenna (American University), on Wednesday, July 7, 2021
Editor's Note:

Matteo Tonello is Managing Director of ESG Research at The Conference Board, Inc., Jason D. Schloetzer is Associate Professor of Business Administration at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, and Francine McKenna is an independent journalist and Adjunct Professor of international business in the MBA program at American University’s Kogod School of Business. This post is based on CEO Succession Practices in the Russell 3000 and S&P 500: 2021 Edition, published by The Conference Board, Heidrick & Struggles, and ESGAUGE.

CEO Succession Practices in the Russell 3000 and S&P 500: 2021 Edition reviews succession event announcements about chief executive officers made at Russell 3000 and S&P 500 companies in 2020 and, for the S&P 500, the previous 19 years. The project is a collaboration among The Conference Board, executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, and ESG data analytics firm ESGAUGE.

Data from CEO Succession Practices in the Russell 3000 and S&P 500: 2021 Edition can be accessed and visualized through an interactive online dashboard. The dashboard is organized into five parts.

Part I: CEO Succession Rates illustrates year-by-year succession rates and examines the effects on those rates of firm performance and CEO age—two critical determinants of top leadership changes. The section also includes details on forced versus voluntary CEO successions.

Part II: CEO Profile provides demographic statistics on CEOs currently serving in the Russell 3000 and S&P 500 indexes—including their age, age diversity, gender, tenure, and tenure diversity.

Part III: Departing CEOs and Part IV: Incoming CEOs are similarly structured, with the demographic profile of departing and incoming CEOs, the balance between incoming and departing female CEOs, and a review of the reasons (where stated) for CEO departures.

Part V: Placement Type and Other Practices complements the information of the previous sections with data on CEO placement type (whether an inside promotion or an outside hire), the tenure-in-company of inside CEO appointments, the inside appointment of “seasoned executives” who have been with the company for 20 years or longer, and the appointments as CEO of non-executive directors. The section ends with data on other succession practices, such as the joint election of incoming CEOs as board chairs, the choice of interim CEOs during phases of leadership transition, and the quarterly distribution of CEO succession announcement and effectiveness dates.

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