CEO Succession Practices: 2012 Edition

CEO Succession Practices: 2012 Edition documents and analyzes succession events of chief executive officers (CEOs) of S&P 500 companies. In addition to updates on historical trends, the study features discussions of the most notable cases of CEO succession that took place in 2011 (based on press announcements and other publicly available information) as well as the results of a survey of corporate secretaries and general counsel on the succession oversight practices of their boards (administered annually by The Conference Board). The study includes the following: Part I-CEO Succession Trends (2000–2011): Year-by-year succession rates; Part II-CEO Succession Practices (2011): Includes two sections, “Board Practices in CEO Succession Planning” and “Communication Practices in CEO Succession”; Part III-Notable Cases of CEO Succession (2011): Summaries of 10 episodes of CEO succession that made headlines in 2011 (Advanced Micro Devices; The AES Corporation; Apple; First Solar; Gannett Co.; Hewlett-Packard; H&R Block; Newell Rubbermaid; PG&E; and Yahoo); Part IV-Shareholder Activism on CEO Succession Planning (2011): Discusses a critical policy reversal by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on the excludability of shareholder proposals in CEO succession policies (Hewlett-Packard; Kohl's; News Corp; Red Robin Gourmet Burgers; United Natural Foods). Concluding the report is an appendix of The Conference Board Roadmap to CEO Succession Planning, which outlines a series of steps intended to help directors organize succession planning, integrate it with existing board responsibilities, make it transparent to all stakeholders, and ultimately define it as an ongoing element of business strategy.