As we come down to the end of 2011 it is evident that 2011 was not an easy time to be a CEO of a major corporation. As much of the business publications have shown, being a CEO of company is not what it used to be.
Some of the changes in leadership during the year were a result of companies seeking help through difficult crises or simply looking for someone to give them a new perspective. In the end it appears that many of the new CEO’s either left on their own or were shown the door by the end of the year.
HP
One of this year’s interesting hire was the decision to bring in former SAP CEO Léo Apotheker to take Mark Hurd’s old job. Some commentators have argued that Apotheker didn’t have expertise in the consumer market, which still accounts for a large portion of HP’s revenue. This was evident when he announced that HP would spin off its PC division entirely. With the sales of phone and TouchPad dropping, HP’s board, asked Apotheker to leave in September. Next, the HP board filled the CEO spot with Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay.
AVON
This December, Avon announced that it would split the CEO and chairman roles in two. Avon has been dealing with a few crises in the past years ranging from an SEC investigation related to bribery allegations, to analysts slamming the company over earnings. The current plan is to keep Andrea Jung on as interim CEO until the company finds a replacement, at which point she’ll become executive chairman. Andrea Jung has held the CEO position the longest of any female at a Fortune 500 company. Yet, she has been quoted as stating, it’s a different world out there for direct-sales cosmetics than it was when she became CEO in 1999.
Olympus
One of the shortest terms for a CEO this year goes to former CEO of Olympus, Michael Woodford. His demise allegedly came after he uncovered some upsetting information about the company’s financials not showing up to $1.5 billion worth of investment losses. When Woodford brought the issue to the board, he was then fired.
Yahoo
Back at the farm here in Silicon Valley there was the removal of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. According to some reports Bartz was let go over the phone by Board chairman Roy Bostock who read her a lawyer’s statement over the phone. The reason? During Bartz’s last days, employee approval ratings dropped down to 24% from 99% when she was first hired in Janaury Furthermore, Yahoo recently suffered from an ugly public argument over the spin-off of promising Chinese online payment platform Alipay from Alibaba.
Time
Time Warner ran into this problem this past year, when Ann Moore, the head of its magazine division Time Inc., left her job in August 2010, after 32 years with the company.
In came Jack Griffin who was formerly the president of Meredith Corp’s magazine group. But, after just six months on the job, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes made it clear that that Griffin’s management style “did not mesh with Time Inc. and Time Warner.” Then, in November, Bewkes announced that Digitas CEO Laura Lang would fill the vacant chief exec spot at the magazine publisher in January.
So, there you have some of the highest profiled CEO transitions of the year. It is true that being a CEO is not easy these days. Many executives now understand that these positions are more volatile than ever. In fact, today’s executives need to have a flexibility and instinct to manage and lead during a time of uncertainty not seen before.
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