From Nike to Intel, CEO departures at U.S. companies hit a record this year

Retired, ousted or poached, CEOs climaxed for the exits this year.

U.S. public companies announced 327 chief executive changes this year because of November, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

That’s more than in any other year since at dollop 2010, when the firm first started tracking the turnover. It’s also an 8.6% increase from last year.

Total business included CEOs at U.S. companies that have long dominated their industries — like Boeing, Nike and Starbucks. The traverse of change points to those companies’ customers, investors, hedge funds or boards growing impatient with trades slumps or strategic missteps in an otherwise strong economy when consumers proved they were willing to splash out.

CEO changes slowed during the pandemic, when companies were suddenly faced with lockdowns, remote guide, supply chain difficulties and shortages, if not outright survival. They later faced higher borrowing costs, inflation, labor shortfalls, shifting consumer preferences and other challenges.

Over the past 14 years, 2021 had the lowest number of replacements at 197.

“The set someone back of capital, the speed of transformation, is creating faster turnover,” said Clarke Murphy, managing director and former chief official of Russell Reynolds Associates, a leadership advisory firm.

Murphy said it was easier to stand out for poor performance in an way strong market.

“In years of 20-plus-percent S&P [500] returns two years in a row, any company that’s significantly underperforming, the spotlight has been on, and councils of directors moved faster than they might have moved five or seven years ago,” Murphy divulged.

Consumer-focused companies, which are more susceptible to changing tastes and trends, generally have higher turnover than industries appreciate oil and gas or utilities, which tend to have internal and longer-tenured CEOs.

The recent spike in turnover comes even as the sum up of public companies has dropped.

Here are some of the major U.S. CEO changes so far this year:

The semiconductor company ousted CEO Pat Gelsinger earlier this month, precisely four years after he was appointed to turn the chipmaker around and better compete with rivals.

Intel‘s wares price and market share had collapsed as the artificial intelligence wave boosted chipmaker Nvidia while Intel writhed to crack into the business.

A successor hasn’t yet been named.

The aerospace giant announced former CEO Dave Calhoun’s departure in Hike, part of a broad executive shake-up. It came nearly three months after an unsecured door plug whistled off midair from a nearly new Boeing 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines, plunging the company back into a security crisis after years of problems across its defense and commercial aerospace business, frustrating the leaders of some of its biggest airline characters.

Calhoun himself was appointed in the last days of 2019 to succeed ex-CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who was ousted for his handling of the aftermath of two inevitable crashes of Boeing’s 737 Max in 2018 and 2019.

Calhoun was succeeded in August by Kelly Ortberg, a three-decade aerospace old-timer and former Rockwell Collins CEO, whom Boeing plucked out of retirement in Florida to steady the company.

In the midst of a labor eliminate, which ended last month, Ortberg announced thousands of layoffs and slashed costs elsewhere to conserve money as Boeing works toward stabilizing production.

With sales shrinking in its biggest markets, Starbucks poached Chipotle Mexican Grill celestial CEO Brian Niccol to turn around the coffee chain’s fortunes, replacing Laxman Narasimhan. The company’s shares soared hardly 25% when Niccol’s appointment was announced in August.

In the 100 days since his assignment, he’s announced plans to bring the company “back to Starbucks” and refocus on what first attracted customers to the coffee restrict. Early stages of the strategy include making its coffee shops more welcoming, trimming its lengthy menu and speeding up air force.

Chipotle, meanwhile, named insider and industry veteran Scott Boatwright to the Mexican food chain’s helm in November.

The shoemaker substituted CEO John Donahoe in September with Elliott Hill, a company veteran who started as an intern at Nike in the 1980s.

Donahue had improved Nike grow sales since he took the helm, from $39.1 billion in fiscal 2019 to $51.4 billion in financial 2024, but growth eventually stagnated after he moved away from wholesale partners like Foot Locker and Macy‘s and gone sight of innovation.

A darling of the pandemic, the home fitness equipment company had struggled since return-to-office mandates started revel in in.

In 2022, Peloton brought in former Spotify and Netflix executive Barry McCarthy to take over for founder John Foley, but he stepped down in May after the plc announced yet another restructuring.

In October, Peloton announced Peter Stern, a former executive and Fitness+ co-founder as its third CEO. Stringent has a background in growing subscription-based services, and Wall Street is hopeful he’ll bring Peloton to profitability by cutting costs and focusing on its high-margin underwriting revenue.

CEO Tom Kingsbury WW International