Companies are replacing CEOs in record numbers— and they're getting younger

There hasn't been such a big crop of new leaders running Corporate America in at least 15 years

- Theo Francis

About one CEO in nine was replaced last year across 1,500 of the biggest publicly traded companies.

(ISTOCKPHOTO)

Record CEO turnover at U.S. public companies has put the biggest class of incoming chief executives in years at the helm of massive enterprises—and the newcomers are younger and less experienced than before.

About one CEO in nine was replaced last year across 1,500 of the biggest publicly traded companies, a new analysis finds. That is the highest rate since at least 2010, when the U.S. was emerging from the financial crisis.

The pace doesn’t appear to be slowing. Dozens more companies brought in new CEOs in January or early February, including Walmart, Procter & Gamble and Lululemon Athletica. On a single day in early February, Disney, PayPal and HP announced new CEOs, and last week Kroger named a former Walmart executive to head the grocer.

The result is a grand experiment in leadership as companies grapple with the swift rise of artificial intelligence, the unraveling of long-established trade practices and an unsettled economy and geopolitical order.

“We're in a new environment, and someone who's going to replay the playbooks of the past is not necessarily right,” said James Citrin, head of the global CEO practice at executive-recruiting firm Spencer Stuart, which produced the report. “If the CEO doesn’t get momentum both internally with operating performance and also with investors, then boards are more impatient even than they were.”