2015 CEO Success study

For sixteen years, Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting business, has examined trends in CEO successions and key factors that contribute to CEO success. This year’s study, takes a special look at CEOs hired from outside the company.

Hiring an executive from outside a company to serve as chief executive officer has historically been a last resort—a move companies typically made only when a board of directors had to force out the incumbent CEO suddenly, or had failed to groom a suitable successor, or both. That’s changing. In the most recent four-year period (2012–15), boards chose outsiders in 22 percent of planned turnovers, up from 14 percent in 2004–07.

Industries experiencing the most disruption have brought in higher-than-average shares of outsider CEOs and Western European companies in general are hiring outsiders more reactively than proactively. They also hire almost double the share of outsider CEOs compared with companies in the U.S./Canada.