January Executive Turnover Continues to Grow

Liberum’s January 2012 executive turnover data has continued to show growing turnover within the executive ranks similar to what we have seen for most of the last ten months. January has actually seen a continuing positive trend with regard to the number of people filing new unemployment claims and, even more significantly, the economy has actually generated more jobs. On Friday February 3, the United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced its latest employment numbers. The news overall was pretty good, considering what most analysts had expected. The official unemployment rate dropped a modest 0.2% down to 8.3%. According to the BLS’s official Employment Situation Summary released Friday morning:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 243,000 in January, and the unemployment rate decreased to 8.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job growth was widespread in the private sector, with large employment gains in professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and manufacturing. Government employment changed little over the month.

The unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point in January to 8.3 percent; the rate has fallen by 0.8 point since August. The number of unemployed persons declined to 12.8 million in January.

Liberum expects this trend will continue, while ever so slowly.

Below is a breakdown of the key executive category percentage increases for January 2012 compared with January a year earlier and the previous month of December 2011 and here again, the number totals were quite positive.

• For January all four key categories saw increases, CEO changes increased a huge 191%, CFO changes increased 144%, overall C-level (as defined by Liberum Research as board of directors, CEOs, CFOs down to corporate VPs) changes increased 107% and board of director changes increased 11% as compared with January 2011 totals.

• The month to month change in executive turnover was much smaller for December 2011 to January 2012. CEO changes increased 4%, CFO changes increased 21%, overall C-level changes increased 11% while board of director changes declined 5%.

Below are the key statistics for executive turnover for the month of January followed by graphs outlining the total turnover numbers for each key category.

JANUARY 2012 MANAGEMENT CHANGE STATISTICS

C-LEVEL MANAGEMENT CHANGE STATISTICS
GRAND TOTAL – 1855

TOP INDUSTRY SECTORS

> Energy – 175
> Drugs/Biotech – 146
> Banking – 145

JANUARY 2012 CEO CHANGE STATISTICS
GRAND TOTAL – 247

TOP INDUSTRY SECTORS

> Energy – 27
> Banking – 24
> Drugs/Biotech – 23

JANUARY 2012 CFO CHANGE STATISTICS
GRAND TOTAL – 207

TOP INDUSTRY SECTORS

> Energy – 19
> Drugs/Biotech – 18
> Metals/Mining – 15

JANUARY 2012 BOARD OF DIRECTOR CHANGE STATISTICS
GRAND TOTAL – 160

TOP INDUSTRY SECTORS

> Banking – 26
> Energy – 21
> Drugs/Biotech – 16

January 2009 Sees Tepid Executive Changes While Employee Layoffs Hemorrhage

Yesterday Liberum released its latest management change numbers for January 2009. As was the case for the last number of months executive turnover has remained tepid when compared with general unemployment figures facing North American economies. Companies throughout North America are shedding employees at an alarming pace while top executives overall have so far managed to remain immune from the layoffs. January’s executive turnover totals dropped precipitously when compared with the same numbers in January 2008. According to Liberum,

CEO turnover declined 35%, CFO turnover declined 49%, all C-level (from board of director all the way down to VP level) turnover declined 47% and board of director changes declined 41%.    

Liberum continues to anticipate that executive turnover will begin to increase as we move through February and into the latter part of the Winter and early Spring.  Below are two charts that breakdown January’s CEO and CFO turnover totals by company market caps at the time of each announced executive change.