LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
MAY 2018 53
| MAKING A NECESSARY EXIT |
he or she leaves unexpectedly, the succes-
sion plan may be incomplete or nonexis-
tent. And as executives have become more
transient in recent years, unforeseen CEO
departures have become more common.
ere are myriad potential causes for an
abrupt CEO departure, French says, in-
cluding declining corporate performance,
high crimes and misdemeanours, death
or illness, early retirement, recruitment by
another company or the transitioning out
of a mercurial founder in favour of a more
restrained administrator. Accordingly, no
company can claim to be immune.
"Most companies don't have a plan in
place for the sudden loss of their CEO,"
French says. "e reality is, it's oen a re-
active strategy for a Board." Her involve-
ment frequently begins, she says, with the
deceptively simple question, "'How do I
deal with firing this executive?' My role is
to get their eyes looking further down the
slope," she says. "Before you jump, you have
to know where you're landing."
Barry Reiter, a partner and corporate gov-
ernance specialist with Bennett Jones LLP
in Toronto, agrees that corporate Boards
face the loss of company leaders with in-
creasing frequency, in part because of a veri-
table tsunami of sexual harassment cases.
TRUTH AND POWER
"You have the Harvey Weinsteins of the
world. e #MeToo movement is [seri-
ous]," Reiter warns, in reference to the
high-profile executive resignations and fir-
ings brought about by numbers of women
revealing sexual assaults committed by men
in positions of power. "A very large number
of companies are suddenly facing that sce-
nario," he says. "It's all over the place and
it's a big deal. It's sad that the world used to
tolerate that sort of behavior but the world
of power relationships is in need of chang-
ing and that day is here."
Still, Reiter says, very few companies
methodically prepare for the sudden loss
of a CEO, with or without the simultane-
ous burden of a major scandal. "ey don't
think of it that way. ey think of the boss
getting hit by a bus." And since very few
CEOs literally fall under the wheels of a
bus, there's scant sense of urgency.
