FTSE 100 boardrooms show more stability than football club dressing rooms in 2023

FTSE 100 chief executives and football club managers are both in the results business, one group in terms of profits and share prices and the other in terms of points and league positions, but in 2023 it looks like shareholders and boardrooms showed more patience than football club executives and supporters, even if headline stock market indices struggled to perform and boardroom turnover was unusually high.

Nineteen FTSE 100 firms saw a change in chief executive, well above the post-2000 average of 13, while a new manager pitched up at no fewer than 60 of the 92 Premiership and Football League clubs in 2023, with seven of those 60 getting in a new man (and they were all men) on two occasions and two making three changes.

Source: Company accounts. *2024 changes as already announced

Again, the FTSE 100 showed more stability here, as three interim bosses stepped aside – Mark FitzPatrick at Prudential, David Egan at RS Group and Nicandro Durante at Reckitt Benckiser – and only one more was appointed, when Murray Auchinloss had to fill the gap caused by Bernard Looney’s fall from grace at BP. Three months on and BP is yet to decide whether Mr Auchinloss will get the top job on a permanent basis or whether another candidate will prevail.

The total of 19 changes in CEO among FTSE 100 firms was, however, unusually high. The average since 2000 is 13 and only 2020’s total of 22 is higher since the turn of the century. Another seven changes have already been announced for 2024 and one (DS Smith) for 2025. Of those, only DS Smith has yet to select its new leader, as the search for Miles Roberts’ successor continues and the packaging giant has time on its side. The succession within the FTSE 100 planning feels more orderly than it is at Championship team Birmingham City and League Two’s Colchester United, who have sacked Wayne Rooney and Matt Etherington as their managers in the first few days of the New Year.

Source: Company accounts

An increase in the number of CEO changes was perhaps to be expected after two relatively quiet years in 2021 and 2022, although they in turn followed a year of huge boardroom turnover in 2020, which saw 22 changes in CEO, the highest figure this century.

This is understandable in some ways, as 2023 was perhaps a more challenging year than 2022. Even if the long-awaited recession failed to materialise, the UK economy could not gather much positive momentum and the FTSE 100 hardly set the world alight either, as it lagged the majority of its major stock market index peers, with the notable exception of China’s Shanghai Composite index and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng. Sticky inflation, rising interest rates, Quantitative Tightening and geopolitical uncertainty all mean that building any real head of steam post covid-19 and lockdowns was perhaps not as easy as many had hoped.

Source: Company accounts, LSEG Datastream data

In most cases the change in FTSE 100 leaders was pretty smooth in 2023.

Nine of last year’s changes – Vodafone, Rolls-Royce, Prudential, Rightmove, Whitbread, Halma, Hargreaves Lansdown, United Utilities and Unilever – had been announced in 2022 and all bar Unilever had already identified and selected their new leader before 2023 began.

That said, some leaders did not necessarily depart of their own volition, or at least at a time of their choosing. Bernard Looney was ultimately sacked by BP; Jack Bowles disappeared suddenly from BAT after the tobacco firm paid a fine relating to sanctions-busting in North Korea; Dame Alison Rose stepped down amid a furore over whether she had inappropriately revealed details of Nigel Farage’s bank account and how the bank had handled the matter; and shareholder pressure and poor share price performance forced out Entain’s Jette Nygaard-Andersen just before Christmas.

As a result of all of these changes, the average tenure of a FTSE 100 CEO is now 65 months, or just under five-and-a-half years.

Kris Licht at Reckitt Benckiser, Mark FitzPatrick at St. James’s Place and Stella David at Entain have been in position for less than three months, while Antonio Simoes and Joe Lister are in their first week in the top job at Legal & General and Unite, respectively.

By contrast to these newbies, 18 bosses have been in charge for more than a decade. Three of those – Next’s Simon Wolfson, Dechra’s Ian Page and Ocado’s Tim Steiner – have run their charges for more than 20 years, although Dechra and Mr Page will leave this list shortly, upon the closure of EQT’s £4.5 billion acquisition of the veterinary drugs specialist, whose shares will cease trading on 17 January.

Another two bosses – Liv Garfield at Severn Trent and Pershing Square’s chair Anne Farlow – could join this list as they reach their ten-year landmark in 2024.

Spirax-Sarco Engineering’s Nick Anderson will drop out of this list, however, as he is stepping down in 2024.

Source: Company accounts. *As of 3 January 2024

The average FTSE 100 boss’ tenure must make football managers green with envy.

Only five of the 92 gaffers across the Premiership, Championship, League One and League Two can beat the average FTSE 100 CEO’s tenure of 5.4 years and their average time in the dug-out is just 18.5 months, or 1.5 years. Only 11 football bosses can point to just three years in their position.

Source: Utilita Football Yearbook, club websites, BBC Sport website. *As of 3 January 2024

The further you go down the league pyramid, the greater the pressure seems to be, perhaps because the prospect of relegation to non-league football is such a dreadful one for club chairs, boardrooms and supporters to contemplate. Even if clubs such as Luton, Lincoln, Doncaster, Mansfield, Oxford and Newport have managed to bounce back and regain league status, many more have not managed the return trip (or failed to make it last), including York City, Barnet, Halifax, Oldham, Rochdale, Hartlepool, Kettering, Aldershot, Darlington, Chesterfield, Torquay, Chester, Hereford, Kidderminster, Yeovil, Rushden & Diamonds and Maidstone. Some of those have dropped even further down the ladder or even gone broke and been re-formed as phoenix clubs.

Source: Company accounts, Utilita Football Yearbook, club websites, BBC Sport website. *As of 3 January 2024

Granted, not all clubs change boss voluntarily. Some bosses jump ship to go elsewhere, as happened at Plymouth Argyle in the case of Steven Schumacher, who took over at Stoke after the sacking of Alex Neil, and Gareth Ainsworth, who swapped Wycombe Wanderers for Queen’s Park Rangers after the Loftus Road club had shown Neil Critchley the door. That left their former employers looking for a new manager.

Nevertheless, the usual fate of a manager is the sack and 20 clubs in the Championship changed manager in 2023, compared to 15 in League One, 13 in League Two and 12 in the Premier League. Seven clubs changed manager twice in the course of the year and two managed it three times (Leeds United and Forest Green Rovers).

As a result, Premier League and League One managers seem to get the longest chance to prove their worth, at 2.3 years on average, compared to 2.0 years in League Two, 1.0 in the Championship and a frightening 0.9 years in League One. The overall average tenure for a football manager of just 1.5 years is already being bettered by 75 bosses within the FTSE 100.

Two seasons was all Cherie Lunghi got in the 1980s series The Manageress where she played Gabrielle Benson, the manager of a team in the men’s Second Division (as it was then, Championship as it is now).

That is one glass ceiling which women have yet to break in the UK, even if 11 FTSE 100 firms have female chief executives or chairs of the board, in the case of two investment trusts.

Allison Kirkby will add to that list when she takes the helm at BT in January, when the number of female bosses in the FTSE 100 will therefore rise to 12, all other things being equal.

Source: Company accounts. *As of 3 January 2024

Even allowing for four female CEO appointments in 2023 and one more already announced for 2024, advocates of diversity will still see that as a low hit rate, relative to the total of 19 changes in FTSE 100 CEO last year.

The post of CFO is seeing more progress here – 11 of the 31 new CFOs appointed in 2023 are women and three of the 13 appointments already scheduled for 2024 are female, with the identity of three new number crunchers yet to be filled. That said, four female CFOs – Sally Lake at Beazley, Anna Manz at the London Stock Exchange, Anne-Francois Nesmes at Smith & Nephew and Amanda James at Next – are due to step down this year, while Louisa Burdett is moving as CFO from Croda to Spirax-Sarco Engineering. All of that movement will leave the number of female CFOs at 29, all other things being equal, down from the current list of 30.

Source: Company accounts. *As of 3 January 2024

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