A study has found that 17 percent of the world's 2,500 largest public companies changed their CEOs in 2015, a 16-year high, with a rise of outsider CEOs who are viewed as more unbiased and transformative, according to the CEO Success Study released by consulting firm Strategy& on Wednesday.
Strategy&, PwC's strategy consulting business, attributed the many CEO changes to the greater challenges caused by the global economic situation in 2015 and rising merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, which triggers CEO turnover.
In 2015, M&A-related turnover accounted for 17 percent of all global turnover of CEOs, the highest share since 2007, said Strategy&.
That's not surprising. Global M&A deal volume reached $5 trillion in 2015, a record high, data from US financial data provider Dealogic showed.
Outsiders accounted for 22 percent of all CEOs brought in via a planned succession between 2012 and 2015, up from 14 percent from 2004 to 2007.
The CEO succession rate of Chinese companies in 2015 reached 16.1 percent, a small increase compared with 15 percent in 2014.
Chinese enterprises executed around $111.9 billion worth of cross-border M&As in 2015, financial news portal caixin.com reported on January 7.
Among the incoming CEOs in Chinese enterprises in 2015, 84 percent were insiders and 16 percent were employed from outside.
Globally, the share of incoming women CEOs fell to less than 3 percent in 2015, the lowest percentage since 2011.
"Women will have more chances to serve as CEOs considering that more companies are considering outsiders, and female CEOs are more often hired from outside the company than male CEOs," Xu Huchu, managing director of Strategy =& for China, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Strategy& identified the world's 2,500 largest public companies, defined by their market capitalization as of January 1, 2015.
