In the hot seat
Chief financial officers, watch your backs.
Almost 60% of chief executive officers plan to replace a member of their C-suite in the coming six months, and CFOs are the most likely to go, according to a recent survey of global CEOs by Boston Consulting Group.
COOs, CHROs and CMOs are also at risk, the consulting firm found, especially those working at large companies.
Behind the potential shake-up is a desire by CEOs to make sure that leadership teams have the right qualifications to operate in an AI-driven world. “CEOs and boards are looking at what skills will be required in the future,” said David Martin, managing director and senior partner at BCG.
CFOs in particular are in the spotlight as companies face a reacceleration in inflation, stemming in part from the war in Iran. Often a company’s No. 2 after the CEO, they can be in the firing line when performance is lagging and the board wants to retain the top executive. Over a quarter of CEOs said their CFO posed the greatest threat to their own job security.
“CFOs have been under more acute pressure to deliver in a challenging environment,” Martin said.
That mirrors recent reports from executive recruiters, with Crist Kolder Associates finding that turnover in the top finance seat at companies in the S&P 500 and Fortune 500 — at 18.3% in the first six months of the year — is on track to hit a post-pandemic high.
Boyden, another recruitment firm, also saw an increase in CFO replacements in the second and third quarter, according to Kathy Pattillo, a managing partner who heads up the company’s financial officers practice.
“There’s a mismatch between what CFOs are expected to do and what they were originally hired for,” Pattillo said. “It’s not that CFOs are less capable than before. It’s because the job has become materially larger.”
Shaking up the C-Suite
CEOs are looking to replace CFOs and other executives in the coming six months
Nike, Oracle, Hershey and Lyft are among the companies that appointed new CFOs this year, and the count keeps growing, albeit more slowly ahead of the end of the year as CEOs need their finance chiefs to close the books for 2026. Interestingly enough, CEO turnover through June held steady near the 10-year average of roughly 11%, according to Crist Kolder. The firm doesn’t track the frequency of changes in other C-suite positions.
CEOs aren’t the only ones reassessing the people around them. Employees are taking a harder look at their leaders, too. The BCG survey, which queried 645 CEOs at companies with $100 million or more in revenue in June and July, as well as 500 non-executive employees, found a striking gap in trust.
While nearly 90% of CEOs said they’re confident that employees trust their leadership, less than half of employees said they do — due in part to how executives communicate about artificial intelligence. Around 40% of surveyed employees said their CEO hasn’t been forthcoming enough about the impact of AI on their roles and careers, and less than 10% give their bosses top grades for explaining how the technology will affect jobs more broadly.
That gulf in perception has financial implications, BCG said. “At companies that didn’t invest significantly in upskilling initiatives, employees were more likely to believe that their job would be replaced in the next five years,” Martin said. That in turn can have a big impact on performance, as employees who think their jobs will vanish might become less motivated or leave the business.
The issue around trust also could endanger CHROs, as human resources teams are often perceived as being slow to adjust to AI, Martin said. “If part of the employee trust piece is around responsiveness to AI, then CEOs say they need to have a team that’s actually savvier” than the one they have right now, he said.
There’s one group however that seems relatively unconcerned about job security – the CEOs themselves. In the survey, 80% of them said they’re unlikely to be replaced in the coming 12 months.
“The biggest existential question for CEOs is if they are the right person for AI,” said Sylvain Duranton, another managing director and senior partner at BCG. “It’s the biggest legacy-defining move for a CEO right now.”
By the numbers 42%
The percentage of CEOs who fear their businesses might be moving too slowly to respond to market changes, according to a survey by BCG.
