Research and commentary from exechange appears in renowned business publications. Coverage includes mentions in Bloomberg, CNN Business, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, NBC News, The Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Featured press citations:
Agenda, a Financial Times service
A ‘Striking’ CEO Termination Over Something He Said
“Of the 2,283 CEO exits announced between Jan. 1, 2017, to Oct. 3, 2024, there were 41 CEOs, or 1.8%, who left their posts with a specific reference to misconduct allegations in official departure announcements, according to data collected on the Russell 3000 Index by Exechange.”
(October 21, 2024)
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Bloomberg
CEOs Fired for Office Affairs Are Rarer Than You Think
“Thursday’s ouster of Alan Shaw as Chief Executive Officer of Norfolk Southern Corp. is just the seventh time since 2017 that a large US company has said it pushed out its top boss for an office affair, according to data from exechange.com, which tracks CEO departures for businesses in the Russell 3000.”
(September 13, 2024)
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Fortune
Starbucks’ ousted CEO oversaw a $32 billion drop in market value—but he’ll still leave with millions
“Still, [Starbucks Corp. CEO Laxman] Narasimhan got warm wishes from board chair Mellody Hobson on the way out, and she thanked him for his dedication and ‘laser focus.’ Yet he was very likely pressured heavily to leave, according to a report from executive exit analytics firm Exechange. The firm ranks the likelihood that a CEO was pressured to exit, given that CEOs are almost never fired publicly. On a scale of 0 to 10, Narasimhan’s departure is a nine, according to founder Daniel Schauber. Schauber’s report noted that former CEO Howard Schultz had written an open letter criticizing Starbucks and that activist investor Elliott Management acquired a sizable stake a few weeks ago.”
(August 14, 2024)
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Bloomberg
Narasimhan’s Ouster at Starbucks Adds Fuel to Record Firing Pace
“The abrupt departure of Laxman Narasimhan at the helm of Starbucks Corp. is adding to a record number of CEO ousters at US companies. Of the 191 chief executive officers who have left companies in the Russell 3000 Index this year, 74 were considered to be fired or forced out, according to data compiled by exechange.com, a research provider that analyzes public sources to track executive changes. That’s the most at this time of year since the firm began tracking CEO departures in 2017.”
(August 13, 2024)
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Fortune
“[The CEO’s] exit earned him a 10 on ‘The Push-Out Score’ from independent research firm Exechange, which tracks executive departures and ranks on a scale of 0 to 10 whether a CEO or CFO was forced out or pressured to resign rather than left voluntarily. [The CEO’s] age, 58, plus his short tenure in the CEO role, and the form and language of the notice all contributed to the score, Exechange researcher Daniel Schauber wrote in the firm’s April report. ‘The constellation of all the aforementioned warning signals leaves little room for interpretation and indicates that Wilson was under pressure to leave his post as CEO,’ he explained.”
(May 25, 2024)
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Bloomberg
AEP’s Top Boss Was Let Go. That Spotlights Shorter Tenures for Women CEOs
“Female chief executives exit after an average of 6.3 years, compared with 8.8 years for men, according to data compiled by research provider exechange.com. The figures track CEO departures among companies in the Russell 3000 Index over roughly the last seven years. The data also indicate that female CEOs were slightly more likely to have been forced out than their male counterparts, according to Daniel Schauber, founder of exechange.com.”
(February 27, 2024)
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Bloomberg
JetBlue’s New CEO Clings to Spirit Deal With Few Other Options
“On average, women get less time to run major companies than men, 6.2 years versus 8.8 years, according to data compiled by Exechange.com.”
(January 22, 2024)
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Bloomberg
Return to Office Brings CEO Relationships Back to the Forefront
“CEO ousters for any sort of alleged bad behavior are a rarity in the first place, according to data from Exechange.com, which has tracked CEO departures for companies in the Russell 3000 stock index since the start of 2017. Among more than 1,900 departures since then, only 35 included referenced accusations of CEO of misconduct, and usually without a specific description. In only four of those instances, which included [McDonald’s Corp. CEO Steve] Easterbrook and [Intel Corp. CEO Brian] Krzanich, did the company mention a relationship with an employee as a reason, the data showed.”
(September 15, 2023)
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Forbes
This Is How To Thrive In Your First 100 Days As A Female CEO
“[Female CEOs are] still more likely to be ‘pushed out’ of the role than men. We know this thanks to Exechange’s trademarked Push-out Scoring System, which stems from academic research on executive turnover. This is a metric, ranging from 0 to 10, that serves as a gauge to determine the likelihood of a chief executive leaving voluntarily (0) or being forcibly removed (10), with anything above 5 indicating potential external pressures. Most of the time when a C-Suite executive leaves a role, we’re fed the line that they ‘stepped down,’ but this doesn’t explain the full story. The amount of choice in the matter is up for debate, as they usually choose to jump before being pushed and are rarely openly fired. This pattern is consistent with the recent findings for women. Notably, over the last year, outgoing female CEOs received an average score of 6.5, surpassing the 6.1 average for their male counterparts and meaning they were more likely to be pushed out. Female CEOs also tend to have a notably shorter tenure—4.7 years on average—compared to the 8.1 years of male CEOs.”
(September 4, 2023)
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Quartz
The new CEOs on the block in 2023
“A study showed women tend to be older and have to show more experience compared to their male counterparts to bag a seat at the corner office. Another revealed women hold the top jobs for a shorter time — female CEO tenures average at over 6.3 years compared with 8.4 years for men, data from research firm exechange comparing 20 departing female CEOs and 300 departing male CEOs show.”
(December 28, 2022)
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Observer
‘Quick Quitting’ Among Female CEOs Highlights the Obstacles Facing Executive Women
“Around 5 percent of CEOs who departed over the past 12 months left within the first year, according to Nov. 29 data from Exechange, which tracks CEO exits at the 3,000 largest publicly traded companies in the U.S… Though women face many of the same challenges as men do in the C-suite, they tend to stay for a shorter period of time. Female CEOs step down after 6.3 years on average, according to Exechange data, while men typically remain CEO for 8.4 years on average.”
(November 29, 2022)
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Agenda, a Financial Times service
Recent CEO Exit Latest in a String of Misconduct Resignations
“Since 2017, there have been 32 CEOs in the Russell 3000 who have stepped down with a reference to conduct issues, according to data from exechange. However, that number represents only a small sliver of CEO departures, which totaled 1,685 over that same time frame.”
(November 18, 2022)
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Bloomberg
Ouster of Gap CEO Syngal Follows Trend of Women Being Fired Faster
“[F]emale CEOs typically have shorter tenures and are more likely to be forced out than men in Corporate America. Women in the role step down after an average tenure of 6.6 years, compared with 9.9 years for men, according to data compiled by exechange.com. The figures, which track CEO departures among companies in the Russell 3000 Index, are for the period from the start of 2017 through Syngal’s firing on Monday. The data, which cover 95 women and almost 1,500 men, also indicated that female CEOs were slightly more likely to have been forced out than their male counterparts, according to Daniel Schauber, founder of exechange.com.”
(July 13, 2022)
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Stanford Graduate School of Business
Firing and Hiring the CEO: What Does CEO Turnover Data Tell Us About Succession Planning?
“We find a high association between stock-price performance and the likelihood that a CEO is pressured to leave. This indicates that Push-Out Scores provide informative assessments of whether a termination event is involuntary. It also indicates that boards might be more likely to hold CEOs accountable for performance than prior studies suggest.“
(April 7, 2022)
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Agenda, a Financial Times service
After Incidents Across Years, a CEO’s Sudden Exit
“An analysis of [the CEO’s] departure conducted by Exechange, though, reckoned that [the CEO] likely felt pressured … to leave, ranking the departure with an algorithmically determined ‘push-out score’ of six out of 10. Exechange’s ‘push-out scores’ gauge the likelihood of whether a CEO was forced out of a position. The average is 5, and scores above that figure are considered to mean there may have been additional pressure on the CEO to step down. The independent research provider based its assessment on the vague language used in the departure announcement, [the CEO’s] age, the company’s stock price performance over a two-year period and the opacity of the company’s stated reason for his departure, its report said.”
(April 11, 2022)
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Xerfi Canal
Savoir abdiquer : la déchéance volontaire
“L’acte de démissionner d’une entreprise arrive rarement dans une carrière. Les conditions de préavis, la perte des droits sociaux afférente ou le risque de se retrouver sans rien sur le marché du travail empêchent en effet de nombreux dirigeants de quitter délibérément leur entreprise. D’ailleurs, comme l’indique le cabinet Exechange, qui s’est intéressé aux départs de dirigeants, une majorité sont des départs involontaires, avec pression exercée de la part du conseil d’administration.”
(December 20, 2021)
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Management Today
How CEOs can avoid being fired
“‘CEOs are in the public spotlight more than ever,’ says Daniel Schauber, founder of Exechange, which tracks executive changes and determines their ‘Push-out Score’ – a measure of pressure on departing CEOs that gauges if they were forced out or departed voluntarily. According to the Push-Out Score analysis model, between 2017 and 2021 half of 1,093 departing CEOs in the US stepped down under strong pressure. ‘Being forced out or fired is perfectly normal for a CEO,’ Schauber says. ‘At the same time, CEOs are usually keen to protect their own reputation as much as possible when they are forced to leave. As a result, they usually prefer to leave quietly and avoid a very public firing.’”
(September 7, 2021)
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Agenda, a Financial Times service
CEO Left After Groping Accusation, Board Claims Long-Planned Succession
“Still, more than three years since the MeToo movement exploded, pointing to misconduct when a CEO leaves is relatively rare but not unheard of. Indeed, among the 1,183 companies that announced CEO departures from Jan. 1, 2017, to June 1 of this year, there were 23, or 1.9%, who stepped down with a specific reference to misconduct allegations in the official departure announcement, according to data collected from the Russell 3000 stock index by Exechange.”
(June 4, 2021)
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Debating bad leadership
“The second source [for an estimate of forced CEO turnover] is exechange, a private company that scores CEO departures by reviewing publicly available information, to produce a ‘Push-out’ Score of 0 to 10. This approach recognizes that there are varying degrees to which CEOs are forced out. A score of 0 indicates that the executive’s departure was almost certainly voluntary, a score of 10 represents an openly forced exit, and anything over 5 suggests that the CEO left under some sort of a cloud.”
(April 2021)
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Bloomberg
Cuomo Keeps Grip Amid Scandal Few Corporate Boards Would Allow
“Seven CEOs among companies in the Russell 3000 Index of large U.S. companies were fired or resigned in 2019 and 2020 due to improper relationships or other non-financial misconduct allegations, according to exechange, a company that tracks CEO firings.”
(March 18, 2021)
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Agenda, a Financial Times service
Firing the CEO Is Getting Easier
“In October 2017, The New York Times detailed allegations of sexual harassment against now-convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, setting off a movement that saw the fall of many executives accused of sexual misconduct. The following year, 13 out of 251 departing CEOs in the Russell 3000 were ousted with a reference to misconduct, Exechange data provided to Agenda illustrates. At 5.2%, the instance of exits that noted misconduct that year far outpaced the 0.4% from 2017. Moreover, following a dip to 1% in 2019, 2.1% of the nearly 300 announcements about CEO departures in 2020 included a mention of misconduct allegations, the figures show.”
(January 11, 2021)
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Agenda, a Financial Times service
Boards Review C-Level Transitions in Light of Covid-19
“Daniel Schauber, founder of CEO-exit research firm Exechange, explains that a wave of CEO departures hit in April 2020, when fears from the pandemic were at a high and market dislocation was still at an extreme. Exechange measures ‘push-out scores,’ which gauge the likelihood that a CEO was or was not forced out of a position. The average is 5, and scores above that figure are considered to mean additional pressure was placed on a CEO to step down. In April 2020, the average push-out score rose to 7.5, compared to 5.2 in April 2019. It was the highest the score had reached since December 2018.”
(July 20, 2020)
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The Handbook of Board Governance
The Handbook of Board Governance (Richard Leblanc, Second Edition)
“Sample data from exechange shows that over time Push-out Scores are distributed fairly evenly across the scoring system of 0 to 10, reflecting the ambiguity surrounding most CEO departures and further helping to explain why researchers have trouble determining the relation between CEO performance and termination.”
(May 2020)
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Bloomberg
Four CEOs Found the Secret to Thriving During the Retail Apocalypse
“Just last year about four dozen chief executives of U.S. companies making everything from Tupperware to jeans departed, according to researcher Exechange.”
(January 6, 2020)
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Bloomberg
Retail Apocalypse Gives More Women a Shot as CEO
“The consumer sector has pushed out 50 chief executives this year, more than any other industry, according to an Exechange analysis of executive departures. … But so far, female CEOs in retail have not been forced out—or pushed off the cliff—any faster than their male counterparts, according to Exechange.”
(December 13, 2019)
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Bloomberg
For Bosses, There’s No Such Thing as a Harmless Office Romance
“Consensual relationships may have been a factor in other dismissals in which companies didn’t disclose details, according to Exechange, which monitors CEO firings among companies in the Russell 3000.”
(December 5, 2019)
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Bloomberg
There’s Unprecedented Carnage for Consumer CEOs This Year
“So far in 2019, 45 CEOs have left under pressure from companies making everything from hamburgers to jeans. That’s more than any other industry and represents a churn rate that is almost double that of last year and also surpasses the previous year, according to data collected from the Russell 3000 stock index by Exechange, which tracks CEO departures. So far, an average of five CEOs have departed each month this year. ‘The data shows increasing pressure, and the pressure seems to be highest in 2019,’ said Daniel Schauber, founder of Exechange.”
(November 14, 2019)
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Inc.
7 High-Profile Departures That Defined the Great CEO Exodus of 2019
“It’s being called the Great CEO Exodus of 2019. … The large number of departures could be due to greater pressure from boards: One study suggests that 59 percent of them appear to be the result of executives being forced out, regardless of the official explanation. Exechange, a service that tracks executive departures, has found that over the 12 months ending September 30, more executives seem to have been pushed out than average. ‘More than one in two CEOs stepped down under high pressure,’ Daniel Schauber, founder of Exechange, wrote in the company’s recent report.”
(November 4, 2019)
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Agenda, a Financial Times service
CEO Tenure-Slip Shows Boards ‘Less Patient’
“Research firm Exechange, which tracks CEO exits, has found that exits in the Russell 3000 are consistent with Challenger’s broader research on chief executives. So far this year, at least 24 CEOs in the Russell 3000 have resigned within two years of assuming their position, according to data from Exechange. In 2017, 28 CEOs left their post within this time frame, and that number grew to 36 CEOs in 2018. ‘Boards are less patient with their CEOs,’ says Exechange founder Daniel Schauber.”
(October 7, 2019)
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Forbes
Avoiding Failure At The Top: The Key To Successful CEO Succession
“According to one recent analysis by Exechange, 52% of CEOs from the Russell 3000 Index were asked to leave their roles, and that is just in the past two years.”
(September 19, 2019)
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Les Echos
Plus d’un PDG américain sur deux serait poussé à la démission
“Exechange attribue aux cadres sortants un score de sortie qu’il appelle « push out » de 0 à 10. Un score de 0 indique que la sortie du dirigeant était certainement volontaire, tandis qu’un score de 10 suggère un départ forcé. Tout ce qui dépasse 5 indique qu’il y a des raisons de croire qu’un dirigeant a peut-être été chassé.”
(August 2, 2019)
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Agenda, a Financial Times service
Rising CEO Turnover Hits Succession Plans
“Daniel Schauber, owner of Exechange, says when CEOs leave, the officially stated reason is typically ‘not very telling.’ His firm uses a push-out score to determine how likely it was that the CEO was forced out of the position, with 0 being most likely voluntary and 10 being most likely a forced departure. Therefore, anything over a 5 indicates that there is reason to believe an executive was pushed out, Schauber says. ‘Both a resignation and a retirement can in fact be a departure under strong pressure,’ Schauber says. For example, 52% of the push-out scores for the 505 Russell 3000 CEOs who left their posts over the past two years were between a 6 and 10, indicating ‘more than one in two CEOs stepped down amid high pressure,’ Schauber says.”
(August 2, 2019)
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CNN Business
Up to half of exiting CEOs don’t quit. They get fired
“When companies announce their CEOs are leaving, they may offer any number of vague reasons. But it’s rare that they’d ever say the chief executive was ‘fired’ or explain precisely why. One study suggests that in the past two years, 52% of announced CEO departures from companies on the Russell 3000 Index likely were the result of executives being shown the door. That includes those who say they resigned, stepped down, just felt the time was right to leave or had a sudden urge to spend more time with family. ‘In other words, more than one in two CEOs stepped down under high pressure to do so,’ said Daniel Schauber, founder of Exechange, a service that tracks executive departures.”
(July 19, 2019)
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The Wall Street Journal
Skydiving, Mountain Climbing and Other Ways Execs Terrify Their Shareholders
“Pivotal business leaders rarely die on the job, according to research done by Frankfurt-based firm Exechange. The firm found that six CEOs in the Russell 3000 index died over the past 20 months, the most notable being CSX Corp. chief Hunter Harrison.”
(June 21, 2019)
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Die Welt/Bloomberg
HeidelbergCement-Chefwechsel ist Deutschlands langweiligster
“Das … Analysemodell ‘Push-out Score’ misst den Druck auf die abgehenden CEOs auf einer Skala von 0 bis 10 und kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass der kürzlich angekündigte Abgang von Bernd Scheifele bei HeidelbergCement mit einem Punktwert von null der langweiligste in jüngerer Zeit ist. Heinrich Hiesinger von Thyssenkrupp, Matthias Müller von Volkswagen, John Cryan von der Deutschen Bank und Carsten Kengeter von der Deutschen Börse mussten hingegen unter extremem Druck mit Push-out-Scores von jeweils 10 weichen.”
(March 6, 2019)
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Bloomberg
Moonves Payout Loss Caps Wave of CEOs Called Out on Bad Behavior
“’Definitely, transparency has increased, especially regarding CEO cases,’ said Daniel Schauber, whose Exechange.com counted the 12 instances where boards specified misconduct among more than 200 CEOs who left their jobs at Russell 3000 companies this year. ‘This simply did not exist in 2017.’”
(December 20, 2018)
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Goede leiders zweven niet
“Deze Push-out-score is niet alleen informatief over de reden van vertrek van een individuele CEO, maar kan ook over de totale groep CEO’s interessante informatie opleveren. Zo laat een vergelijking van de Push-out-scores tussen 2017 en 2018 zien dat de gemiddelde Push-out-score toeneemt, en dus dat CEO’s vaker gedwongen vertrekken.”
(October 25, 2018)
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Observer
Has #MeToo Made Large Companies More Honest About CEO Misconduct?
“If you feel you hear about CEOs of large companies stepping down over misconduct allegations more often now than six months ago, you are not delusional. Of the 144 CEOs who have stepped down from Russell 3000 companies (3,000 public companies included in the Russell 3000 index to reflect the overall price trend of the U.S. stock market; top holdings include Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.) in this year so far, eight were ousted with specific reasons related to misconduct; this ratio in 2017 was one in 247 CEOs who stepped down, according to a new study published on Sunday by Exechange.com, an organization tracking CEO departures.”
(August 6, 2018)
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Agenda, a Financial Times service
“Daniel Schauber, founder of Exechange.com, has created a scale to rate how forthcoming companies are when announcing the departure of a CEO. A 0 means the CEO left voluntarily, a 10 means he or she was fired outright. For all of 2018, the average has been more than 5, higher than any year since he developed the scale.”
(August 6, 2018)
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Bloomberg
Corporate Boards Are No Longer Afraid to Say a CEO Was Fired
“Of the executives who left Russell 3000 companies this year, eight have been ousted with a specific reference to misconduct, compared with one in all of 2017, according to a separate analysis by Exechange.com, a group which tracks CEO departures. The web site’s founder is Daniel Schauber, an editor at German finance newspaper Borsen-Zeitung who became frustrated with corporate-speak when it came to reporting about a CEO who was ‘stepping down.’ Schauber developed a system that scores executive departures on a scale of 0, where they clearly left of their own volition, to 10, where they were clearly fired.”
(July 30, 2018)
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Agenda, a Financial Times service
Facing Investors After Abrupt CEO Changes
“’A surprising CEO change shortly before the annual meeting is an enormous challenge for any company,’ writes Daniel Schauber, owner of the research firm exechange, which provides data and analysis on executive movements, in an e-mail. ‘A surprising CEO change always raises many questions among investors, especially when a permanent successor is still to be found.’”
(June 18, 2018)
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Agenda, a Financial Times service
Significant Decline’ in Internal CEO Hires
“The … departure earned a ‘push-out score’ of 10 from exechange, a firm that analyzes executive and CEO departures and rates them on a scale of zero to 10. A score of zero is most likely a voluntary departure while a score of 10 typically indicates that an executive was ‘pushed’ involuntarily out the door.”
(March 16, 2018)
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Harvard Business Manager
“Zu den häufigsten Euphemismen in der Unternehmenswelt zählt die Bekanntmachung, dass eine Führungskraft ihr Amt aufgebe, um ‘mehr Zeit mit der Familie zu verbringen’. Die meisten Beobachter interpretieren dies als Hinweis darauf, dass der Manager gefeuert wurde. Doch sicher können sie sich dabei nicht sein. Für solche Fälle hat der Frankfurter Finanzjournalist Daniel Schauber den ‘Push-out Score’ entwickelt, ein Analyseinstrument, das abzuschätzen hilft, ob ein Abgang freiwillig war oder unfreiwillig.”
(January 2018)
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Harvard Business Review
Leadership – Was the CEO fired or not?
“Among corporate euphemisms, few are more common than the announcement that an executive has resigned ‘to spend more time with family’ – a signal to most observers that the leader was fired. But it’s often hard to know for sure. The financial journalist Daniel Schauber devised the ‘push-out score,’ a model that gauges the likelihood that a resignation was voluntary. … By more clearly identifying situations in which the CEO has been pushed out, investors can better recognize when a company’s strategy isn’t working and identify investment risks that might not be apparent if a resignation is presumed to be voluntary.”
(November-December 2017)
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University of Groningen
Retired or fired? Een algoritme om het vertrek van de baas te doorgronden
“Maar sinds kort is er een algoritme, ontwikkeld door de taalkundige en financieel journalist Daniel Schauber. Op basis van de analyse van aankondigingen van organisaties en aanvullend onderzoek, bepaalt Schauber een zogenaamde ‘Push-Out score’. … De linguïst Schauber heeft er vooral plezier in om met zijn algoritme zogenaamde ‘corporate speak’ te ontcijferen, en te zoeken naar bijvoorbeeld verborgen of impliciete kritiek in teksten vol waardering, maar waarmee de CEO eigenlijk het graf in wordt geprezen.”
(October 5, 2017)
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NBC News
Was A CEO Fired or Did They Retire? This Algorithm Claims To Have The Answer
(September 28, 2017)
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Ведомости (Vedomosti)
Как определить, ушел ли директор сам или его уволили
“46-летний лингвист, редактор финансового издания Börsenzeitung из Франкфурта Даниэль Шаубер основал исследовательскую фирму Exechange и разработал алгоритм для анализа сообщений компаний об уходе гендиректоров и других доступных данных. Его формула присваивает каждому случаю оценку от 0 до 10, где 0 – совершенно добровольный уход, 10 – явное принудительное отстранение от работы.“
(August 21, 2017)
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The Sydney Morning Herald
Stop the weasel words around executive departures
“[A] German researcher … wrote an algorithm to examine top executive departures through wording in company announcements. The algorithm creates a push-out score from zero (voluntary departure) to 10 (forced). Announcements that omit praise for the chief executive or have fuzzy language such as ‘decided to leave’, lead to higher push-out scores. Many scores range in the middle, suggesting chief executives decide to leave after some subtle board encouragement.”
(August 17, 2017)
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The Australian
Decoding the cryptic language of sacking
“’I was fascinated,’ says Mr Schauber, who has analysed thousands of corporate announcements and their patterns. ‘It looks like boilerplate language, but if you look really closely at each word and how the words are weighed, each corporation has its own code. If there are deviations from that norm, there may be information there.’”
(August 17, 2017)
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The Times
Did they jump or were they pushed? Algorithm finds ‘truth’ behind office exits
“Vague phrases such as ‘stepped down to pursue other interests’ and ‘departed from his position for personal reasons’ raise red flags, said Daniel Schauber, …, who sells his analysis through his research firm, Exechange.”
(August 15, 2017)
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Bizwomen
Science: Quit or fired? Algorithm decodes vague words
“The founder of a German research firm has developed an algorithm that helps decipher the sometimes-cryptic language in position-change announcements. … Daniel Schauber looks at factors such as fuzzy language, lack of praise for successes, quick departure timing, no immediate naming of a permanent successor, and the age of the departing employee to formulate a ‘push-out score’ between 0 and 10, where 0 is a completely voluntary departure and 10 is an outright firing.”
(August 14, 2017)
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The Wall Street Journal
Did the CEO Actually Get Fired? There’s a Decoder for That
“Daniel Schauber …, who founded a Frankfurt-based research firm, Exechange, has emerged as a cryptologist of top executive departures. By analyzing company announcements and other data, his proprietary formula produces a ‘Push-Out Score’ ranging from zero to 10.”
(August 13, 2017)
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Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation
Retired or Fired: How Can Investors Tell If the CEO Left Voluntarily?
“Rather than definitely categorize executive departure as forced or voluntary, the Push-out Score offers a graded score that amounts to a confidence level that a CEO was terminated. … The data suggest that Push-out Scores are positively correlated with stock market volatility.”
(June 8, 2017)
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TheCorporateCounsel.net
Did the CEO Quit – or Was it a Resig-firing?
“Reading the tea leaves to determine whether a CEO was forced out is sometimes difficult. Corporate transition announcements tend to be ambiguous, and investors are often left to sort out for themselves whether the CEO was fired or resigned. Now financial journalist Daniel Schauber has come up with a model – the ‘Push-out Score’ – that he contends will help shed light on whether a CEO left voluntarily, or was shoved out the door.”
(June 5, 2017)
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Stanford Graduate School of Business
Retired or Fired: How Can Investors Tell if a CEO Was Pressured to Leave?
“The Push-out Score developed by exechange offers a systematic approach for combining observable evidence with expert human judgment to arrive at a reasonable assessment of the likelihood of CEO termination.”
(May 2017)