Hiring Accelerates on Leadership Teams: Current Executive Turnover Trends

New leadership for a new business environment

What are the current, major executive turnover trends? Many leading public companies underwent a streamlining process in 2023-24, often cutting back on operational staff^[1]. In contrast, our 2025 data shows a significant ramping up of C-suite recruitment. As companies navigate the challenges of 2026, their leaders – from board members to commercial and HR chiefs – need an awareness of current trends so they can build resilient organizations that are nimble enough to respond to the needs of a fast-changing commercial landscape.

In this article, we draw on Altrata’s unique and proprietary database; using our C-suite and board data, we examine the current executive turnover trends and the state of leadership recruitment and turnover at US, Canadian and UK public companies, uncovering the reasons for this acceleration in hiring and the implications for decision-makers and HR leaders, as well as those in professional services and executive search.

Key executive turnover trend: Hiring accelerates on leadership teams

The number and share of new appointments to C-suite teams continued to accelerate in 2025. Our data on the leadership teams of companies in the S&P 500 (US), S&P/TSX 60 (Canada) and FTSE 100 (UK) indices indicates that, in the past couple of years, companies have been on an unusually busy hiring spree. Among S&P 500 companies, the share of new leadership appointments among all leadership roles jumped from 14% in 2023 to 19.5% in 2024 and 22.7% in 2025, equating to more than 1,400 new roles in 2025. This trend continued into the first quarter of 2026, with the number of new roles up year-on-year in absolute terms. In the first quarter of 2026, for example, Greg Abel officially started his CEO role at Berkshire Hathaway (with outgoing CEO Warren Buffett staying on as chairman), while Luke Miels, previously CCO, stepped into the CEO role at GSK.

The executive turnover trend was similar among companies listed on the S&P/TSX 60. For FTSE 100 companies, new leadership hires fell from 16.4% in 2023 to 16.2% in 2024 but then resumed an upward trajectory in 2025, reaching 18.1% of all leadership roles.

CEO and CFO resets

S&P 500 CEO and CFO roles saw notably strong turnover in 2024-25. CEO appointments as a share of all CEO roles rose from 13.5% in 2024 to 19.9% (representing 101 new CEOs) in 2025. Among UK and Canadian listed companies, the trend has been mixed, but this is due, in large part, to their smaller cohorts. When it comes to new CFO appointments, the share has risen across all three indices since 2023, particularly at S&P 500 companies. Over a fifth of CFOs comprised new hires in 2025 – a sharp increase from previous years.

Multiple factors are driving executive turnover trends at the top

What’s behind the increase in top-level executive turnover trends and the significant uptick in appointments? Numerous factors are spinning the executive revolving door, from geopolitical and economic volatility to the continued need for digital transformation. Increased CEO turnover will also make an impact on the rest of the C-suite, often precipitating voluntary or forced departures as a new CEO looks to implement their vision.

This increase in turnover is unaffected by the size of a leadership team, which tends generally to be around the 12-person mark – a number that has increased only very slightly in the past few years. The size of leadership teams among UK and Canadian listed companies is slightly smaller, around the 9 to 11-person mark respectively, but has also risen only slightly.

In particular, CEOs are under significant pressure to perform: they must contend with a challenging competitive environment amid heightened scrutiny and global uncertainty. Boards seem willing to act quickly when unconvinced they have the right leader for the job. However, some of these transitions are a result of CEO retirements – more than a fifth of S&P 500 CEOs are aged 65 and over (though the share is far lower among UK and Canadian listed companies).

New S&P 500 CEOs are trending very slightly younger (56 years old in 2025, in contrast with 56.5 among those who started CEO roles in 2021) and remain highly male dominated (women account for just a tenth of new CEO roles); around three-quarters continue to be internally appointed.

In the UK, where the CEO transition picture is more mixed, there is a notable trend in the rise of short-term appointments to kick-start growth, oversee a difficult transition period or firefight urgent supply chain or recruitment issues^[2]. Such specialist ‘impact leaders’ may be older than the overall trend. Having made their mark, they are free to move on or apply for a longer-term appointment. However, having made it through an impact period, many companies appear to be looking to younger, more energetic future leaders.

The role of the CFO has become more wide ranging and complex in recent years, from steering digital transformation^[3] to managing external stakeholders and redesigning operating models. Other reasons prompting CFO departures include incumbents reaching retirement age, activist pressure, high turnover of CEOs (where an incoming CEO will have different priorities to those of a sitting CFO) and a CFO moving on to a different role internally^[4].

Boards are changing too

Corporate board turnover operates under different dynamics and tends to occur less frequently than in the C-suite. In the US, there are no strict limits on board tenure but many companies still implement a mandatory retirement age (usually around the age of 70 to 75). In the UK, the Corporate Governance Code^[5] recommends a ceiling of nine years for non-executive directors and chairs, after which they are no longer considered to be independent. However, it should be noted that this limit is not mandatory. In Canada, there are no legal limits on the maximum length of time a director can serve on the board of a public company. However, board tenure is governed increasingly by voluntary policies and governance standards rather than law.

Nevertheless, the share of new board appointments has been on the increase in recent years in all three countries of focus. At S&P 500 companies, the share of new board members rose from 10% in 2023 to 12.5% in 2025, equating to 535 incoming board members in 2023 and 689 in 2025. The UK experienced a striking increase from 15.2% in 2023 to 19.2% in 2025; equivalent to 156 and 203 new board members respectively.

New board hires

Concurrently, boards have increased gradually in size over the past few years. Boards are looking for an optimum number of directors to bring in a range of perspectives and skills without any loss of unity or cohesion.

Board size on the increase

The acceleration in leadership hiring and turnover signals a fundamental shift in how organizations are building resilience for an increasingly complex business environment, making it more critical than ever for decision-makers to understand who is moving, why, and what it means for their strategy.

Altrata’s executive intelligence enables organizations to stay ahead of these changes, allowing them to identify emerging leaders, track competitive talent moves, and make more informed decisions in a rapidly evolving leadership landscape. Learn more and get started today.