Record CEO turnover at U.S. public companies has put the biggest class of incoming chief executives in years at the helm of massive enterprises—and the newcomers are younger and less experienced than before.
About one CEO in nine was replaced last year across 1,500 of the biggest publicly traded companies, a new analysis finds. That is the highest rate since at least 2010, when the U.S. was emerging from the financial crisis.
The pace doesn’t appear to be slowing. Dozens more companies brought in new CEOs in January or early February, including Walmart, Procter & Gamble and Lululemon Athletica. On a single day in early February, Disney, PayPal and HP announced new CEOs, and last week Kroger named a former Walmart executive to head the grocer.
The result is a grand experiment in leadership as companies grapple with the swift rise of artificial intelligence, the unraveling of long-established trade practices and an unsettled economy and geopolitical order.
“We’re in a new environment, and someone who’s going to replay the playbooks of the past is not necessarily right,” said James Citrin, head of the global CEO practice at executive-recruiting firm Spencer Stuart, which produced the report. “If the CEO doesn’t get momentum both internally with operating performance and also with investors, then boards are more impatient even than they were.”
Many of the issues they face are a departure from conventional business challenges. Target CEO Michael Fiddelke took over at Target from 11-year veteran Brian Cornell this month. But he found himself posting a video message to employees days before, addressing federal immigration actions in the company’s hometown, Minneapolis. “This isn’t the first message I imagined I’d send,” he said.
In the last quarter of 2025 alone, companies with a combined market capitalization of $1.3 trillion appointed or lost chiefs, including Verizon Communications and Yum Brands, the parent of fast-food chains KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Companies adding or losing new leaders in early 2026 have a combined value of $2.2 trillion, with Walmart making up nearly half, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from corporate-disclosure firm MyLogIQ.
Some changes were long in the works. Warren Buffett turned Berkshire Hathaway over to Greg Abel on Jan. 1—a succession plan Buffett raised in 2021.
Other changes were more sudden. CarMax ousted Bill Nash in November amid a slump in sales, ending his nine-year run. HP picked director Bruce Broussard as interim CEO after Enrique Lores stepped down to take the top job at PayPal next month. Biotech firm Codexis abruptly replaced its CEO of three years with its chief technical officer, Alison Moore, and cut 24% of its workforce at the same time.
Especially in retail, the crosscurrents buffeting companies since the pandemic demand different approaches, said Adolfo Villagomez, who took the helm of 1-800-Flowers.com from its founder in May.
“It’s a very different skill profile when you have growth as a tailwind versus when you have a lot of headwinds and you need to reinvent the company,” said Villagomez, who previously ran a residential rental company and held executive positions at Home Depot. “That’s why you see a lot of change.”
There are signs this is more than the normal ebb and flow of executive reshuffling. Recent high-profile departures include long-tenured executives—including Walmart’s Doug McMillon after more than a decade and Buffett after six decades. But incumbent CEOs are generally stepping down sooner than they traditionally have.
Meanwhile, incoming chiefs are younger and less experienced than previous crops of new leaders, Spencer Stuart found. Incoming CEOs averaged 54 years old, compared with nearly 56 for last year’s appointees.
More than 80% of last year’s 168 incoming CEOs were first-timers, with no prior experience running public companies or other major stand-alone enterprises. Two thirds of them have never served on a corporate board before.
Some, like Raymond James’s Paul Shoukry, are younger than their predecessors were when they got the top job. The financial-services firm promoted Shoukry, 42, from CFO to CEO last February. He succeeded Paul Reilly, who was 55 when he became CEO in 2010.
Executives who haven’t run a stand-alone company aren’t necessarily untested. Josh D’Amaro, the 55-year-old Disney executive slated to take over from Bob Iger next month, has been running the company’s theme-park and cruise unit, with $36 billion in annual revenue and 185,000 employees worldwide.
“Younger makes sense to me, given the changes in the world,” said Cindie Jamison, a longtime turnaround executive who sits on boards including Darden Restaurants and International Flavors & Fragrances. “Things are shifting and changing very dramatically and permanently and you want people who’ve been in the trenches facing these decisions.”
When companies did bring in older and more experienced chiefs, it often reflected a scramble in tough circumstances. More companies chose a board member to run things day-to-day last year, usually a stopgap move that suggests succession hadn’t gone as planned, Spencer Stuart said. That includes 15% of incoming technology, media and telecom CEOs.
New female CEOs grew scarcer last year. Just 9% of new appointments went to women, down from 15% a year earlier. Overall, about 9% of CEOs in the S&P 1500 are women, including 46 in the S&P 500, Spencer Stuart said.
Write to Theo Francis at theo.francis@wsj.com
