CEO Turnover at the Top of the Corporate Food Chain

Liberum has for sometime been talking about the growing turnover in corporate management. Our data has continued to demonstrate the increasing level of management turnover in public companies. Early 2007, unlike the same period in 2006, has not however, shown an increase in overall C-level turnover. To the contrary, first quarter totals indicate a continuation of a C-level slowdown that first appeared in the fourth quarter of 2006. The slowdown took place in a number of key title categories. To get a better feel for one of the more important categories, we have put the following numbers for CEOs broken down by market cap ranges.

We broke the figures down by market cap range to get a different view of where changes are taking place in a specific title category. The below two charts outline the different turnover figures at the larger public companies. The charts illustrate an interesting dichotomy. CEO turnover did not appear to decline in the first quarter of 2007 for the large cap firms with market caps over $10 billion. There was, however, a measurable decline in CEO changes in first quarter for companies with market caps below $10 and up to $1 billion.

CEO Changes in Companies with Market Caps Equal or Greater than $10 Billion
Time Frame	Internal Moves	Joining	Leaving	Promoted	Resigned/Retired	Terminated	TOTALS
2005 *	28	24	5	58	25	0	140
2006	72	43	10	143	45	1	314
Q 1 2006	17	8	5	47	11	0	88
Q 1 2007	16	13	0	51	12	0	94
2005* data is not complete with regard to market caps. A portion of the data was not compiled with market cap data and are not accounted for in this table

CEO Changes in Companies with Market Caps Less than $10B and Greater than $1B
Time Frame	Internal Moves	Joining	Leaving	Promoted	Resigned/Retired	Terminated		TOTALS
2005 *	28	40	6	71	51	0		196
2006	128	89	17	165	123	3		525
Q 1 2006	35	16	4	54	43	1		153
Q 1 2007	25	18	0	33	17	1		94
2005* data is not complete with regard to market caps. A portion of the data was not compiled with market cap data and are not accounted for in this table

We will soon publish the same type of figures for public companies with market caps below $1 billion, stay tuned.