CEO Succession Practices: 2013 Edition

CEO Succession Practices: 2013 Edition documents and analyzes succession events of chief executive officers (CEOs) of S&P 500 companies. In addition to updates on historical trends, this report features discussions of the most notable cases of CEO succession that took place in 2012 (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 report includes the following:

• Part I: CEO Succession Trends (2000–2012) Year-by-year succession rates
• Part II: CEO Succession Practices (2012) Includes two sections, “Board Practices in CEO Succession Planning” and “Communication Practices in CEO Succession.”
• Part III: Notable Cases of CEO Succession (2012) Summaries of 11 episodes of CEO succession that made headlines in 2012.
• Part IV: Shareholder Activism on CEO Succession Planning (2012) Discusses shareholder proposals in this area and documents four companies where succession planning proposals were voted in 2012.

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.