Spencer Stuart has published its Board Index for 40 years.

Which is helpful, because apparently corporate governance needs an annual reminder that boards are still doing board things.

In 2025, the S&P 1500 saw 168 new CEO appointments. The most since 2010.

84% were first time CEOs.

19 directors became CEOs, the highest number since 2020.

That is a lot of movement for a market that spends most of its time claiming it prizes stability, succession planning, and “thoughtful long term leadership development”.

The amusing bit is that Spencer Stuart does not just observe this churn.

It monetises it.

Track the churn.
Publish the churn.
Get hired to solve the churn.
Repeat annually in a handsome PDF.

To be fair, it is a brilliant model. Much cleaner than private equity pretending portfolio company turnover is always “planned leadership evolution” rather than “we finally admitted the person we backed in diligence could not operate the business.”

But there is a more serious point here.

Boards are still not building enough real succession depth. If 84% of new public company CEOs are first timers, that tells you boards are either taking more risk than they admit, or they have spent years underinvesting in internal leadership benches.

Private equity should pay attention.

The CEO search is usually treated as a discrete event.

It is actually a governance failure that started years earlier.

But don’t worry. Someone will write a very elegant report about it next year.