Every CEO exit is a sales lead with better stationery.

Russell Reynolds publishes a Global CEO Turnover Index.

Very useful.

It tracks CEO exits across 13 global stock indices, then gently reminds the market that leadership is unstable, boards are nervous, and someone really ought to help them find the next adult in the room.

In 2025, they tracked 234 global CEO departures.

An eight year high.

86% of new public company CEO appointments were first timers.

Average outgoing CEO tenure fell to 6.8 years in the first half of the year, the lowest since Russell Reynolds started tracking it in 2018.

Short tenure CEO departures, the ones leaving after 30 to 36 months, were up 79% year over year.

That is not just a governance trend.

That is a prospecting list with a nice chart attached.

Every CEO exit is a search mandate waiting to happen.

Every short tenure failure is a board looking for reassurance.

Every “planned transition” is usually a panic attack in a better suit.

Private equity should read this less as a labour market report and more as a warning label.

CEO hiring is getting harder, tenure is getting shorter, and boards are taking more first time risk while pretending they are becoming more sophisticated.

The search firms are not just reporting on churn.

They are packaging it, branding it, and selling the cure.

Fair play, really.

Most firms dream of a market where their own research creates urgency for their own product.

Russell Reynolds just had the manners to call it an index.