When a high-profile CEO exits a company, it doesn’t just make headlines — it can shake up stock markets, fan speculation about a company’s future, or expose behind-the-scenes drama. From quiet handoffs to headline-making scandals, these high-powered executives left at pivotal moments.
Whether they were stepping back, forced out, or walking away on principle, the reasons behind these exits say a lot about leadership, legacy, and the changing face of corporate America.
Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings co-founded the streaming giant in 1997 and served as the company's sole chief executive until 2020 when Ted Sarandos was named co-CEO as part of succession planning.
Now, Hastings is stepping down, making room for Chief Operating Officer Greg Peters to take over Hastings' co-CEO position. Netflix has maintained smooth operations amid business challenges and the COVID-19 pandemic, but the "board and I believe it’s the right time to complete my succession,” Hastings said in a blog post. In a tweet, Hastings added that he plans "to serve as Executive Chairman for many years to come."
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Steve Easterbrook was fired as CEO of McDonald's in 2019. Upon departing, he admitted to having a consensual sexual relationship with an employee, and the company's board of directors determined he violated company policy. But Easterbrook lied to the company about the extent of his relationships with employees, according to a lawsuit filed by McDonald's against Easterbrook, and proof of many more relationships has been found.
McDonald's settled the lawsuit in 2021, requiring Easterbrook to pay back more than $100 million, the amount of his severance package. And in January 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Easterbrook and McDonald's with disclosure violations related to his ousting. Though the SEC isn't hitting the company with a fine, Easterbrook must pay a $400,000 civil penalty for making false and misleading statements to investors about the nature of his dismissal.
The battle of the Bobs has been decided: Chapek is out as Disney's CEO. In a move that shocked many industry insiders, Bob Chapek suddenly stepped down from his role. He had recently come under fire for his plans to cut costs and layoff employees.
His successor is also his predecessor: Bob Iger, a beloved Disney figure who was responsible for acquiring Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel. Though Chapek's contract had just been extended, and Iger said he'd never return to the role again, Disney's board seemingly convinced him to come back and find another successor — hopefully a more successful one.
In his latest faith-inspired epiphany, Hobby Lobby's founder David Green is giving away his company and "choosing God over wealth." Green said his faith was the driving force behind his success, writing in an Oct. 21 opinion piece on foxnews.com that "God was the true owner of my business."
The idea of leaving his business to his children and grandchildren never sat right with him, he said. "It didn’t seem fair to me that I might change or even ruin the future of grandchildren who had not even been born yet. When I realized that I was just a steward, it was easy to give away my ownership.”
Green's net worth is estimated at $13.4 billion, according to Forbes. In an interview with Fox & Friends, Green lamented that "wealth is a curse" and said that the company's entire voting stock had been transferred to a trust.
When Howard Schultz joined Starbucks in 1982, the chain had only four stores. He bought the company in 1987 and grew it into one of the world's most iconic brands — a household name with tens of thousands of locations worldwide. He stepped down in late 2016 but has been serving as interim CEO since Kevin Johnson left the post in early 2022.
Now, Schultz will be stepping aside once again: Starbucks said that Laxman Narasimhan, who was most recently CEO of multinational consumer goods company Reckitt, is to assume the role in April.
Dan Price co-founded Gravity Payments when he was a 19-year-old student. Price made headlines in 2015 for cutting his salary to $70,000, so that all employees would be able to earn at least that much, too. Price recently stepped down from his role as chief executive of the payment-processing company because of a different type of public attention. Earlier this year, the Seattle-based CEO was charged with misdemeanor assault against a woman and reckless driving.
Allegations that Price abused his ex-wife also resurfaced, as did the news that his own brother sued Price in 2015 after alleging he was overpaying himself. In a statement posted on Twitter, Price said: "My No. 1 priority is for our employees to work for the best company in the world, but my presence has become a distraction here. I also need to step aside from these duties to focus full time on fighting false accusations made against me. I'm not going anywhere."
It was John Foley who pitched the idea of an interactive exercise bike in 2011, but stepped down as CEO of Peloton in 2022. It had been a tumultuous time for the on-demand exercise company: Business rose dramatically at the start of the pandemic, but it waned after vaccines became availabel and gyms reopened.
The downturn forced the company to lay off 2,800 employees, including 20% of its corporate workforce. Wall Street analysts viewed Foley's resignation as a pivotal moment that made it more likely that the company might be sold. Amazon, Apple, and Nike are among the big names that have been floated as potential buyers.
Dorsey said he was leaving Twitter in November, with the company's chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal, taking over immediately. It was Dorsey's second time leaving the social media giant after he was forced out in 2008 and returned in 2015 after Dick Costolo resigned.
Dorsey's return wasn't without hiccups. Investment firm Elliott Management requested that he step down in 2020, when he was CEO for both Twitter and Square, and there was concern he wouldn't focus enough attention on Twitter. A deal, including a $2 billion stock buyback, was made to keep Dorsey, but he didn't stick around for long.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, then a humble online bookseller, in 1994, and oversaw its growth into a tech and e-commerce giant. He stepped down in July 2021 as CEO, passing the baton to Andy Jassy, leader of Amazon Web Services.
Bezos didn't exactly retire, however. He has stayed on as executive chairman and is devoting more time to projects like Blue Origin, his SpaceX competitor, as well as the Bezos Earth Fund and The Washington Post, which he owns.
After little more than year in the top job at the iconic company, the board said it was lights out for CEO John Flannery in late 2018. The company has been struggling with disappointing earnings and the current quarter would be no different, missing projections again.
A 30-year GE veteran, Flannery was immediately replaced by board member and outsider Larry Culp. The company's stock has performed better under Culp, but like many of its competitors, GE has struggled from the impact of COVID-19.
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger started the photo-sharing app Instagram in 2010, with Systrom at the helm. It was subsequently bought by Facebook for $1 billion in 2012, one of the social media giant's most successful acquisitions.
The service has about 1 billion users every month and was estimated to be worth $100 billion in 2018, but tensions with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly led the pair to resign in September 2018.
Few individuals have had a greater impact on human civilization than Bill Gates, who in 2000 stepped down as CEO of Microsoft, the company he created with Paul Allen in 1975. In the 25 years between, Microsoft became the biggest company in the world and Gates became the richest person on Earth, though both titles have been trumped in recent years.
Gates remained a board member of the company until early 2020, but sold most of his Microsoft stock and focused on his lofty philanthropic efforts. The company has been doing just fine: Its stock hovered around $50 when he resigned the CEO role; today, it's well over $285.
John Schnatter launched Papa John's in 1984 and built it into an empire that muscled into direct competition with giants such as Domino's and Pizza Hut.
He joined a tiny group of bosses who also served as the face of the business, including Colonel Harland Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Dave Thomas of Wendy's. But in 2017, Schnatter ignited a firestorm when he inserted the company into a controversy about political protests by players in the NFL, the league for which Papa John's served as an official sponsor.
A year later, Schnatter resigned as chairman of the company, which immediately distanced itself from its founder after Schnatter was heard using a racial slur during a conference call. Since his departure, he has roundly criticized the company even as its stock has gianed ground.
In 1993, a chef named Steve Ells intended to open a fine-dining restaurant. He instead wound up building his small burrito shop into Chipotle, one of the biggest restaurant chains in the world.
Already under fire for his massive compensation package, Ells' tenure was dealt a mortal blow in 2017 when dozens of people were sickened by viral outbreaks just a few weeks apart — first E. coli and then norovirus — traced to food served at Chipotle. When Ells left his role as chairman of the board in March of 2020, Chipotle stock was at $710. Today it's more than $1,400.
When Travis Kalanick stepped down as CEO of Uber in 2017, it was the culmination of a hellish year for the pioneering rideshare company.
Uber was fined $20 million for dishonest recruiting tactics, protesters chained themselves to the doors of the company's offices, high-ranking executives fled, the company was the target of several lawsuits, a driver caught Kalanick on video making arguably insensitive and defensive remarks about the company, and, perhaps most damningly, an employee publicly detailed a culture of sexism and harassment that she claimed was widespread throughout the company.
Kalanick also stepped down from the company's board of directors in late 2019 and sold almost all of his shares in the company, which may have been a little premature: Its stock rose steadily, meaning he left some $1.2 billion on the table.
Raised in public housing projects in New York City, Ursula Burns started with Xerox as an intern in 1980. A little less than three decades later, she became the first Black woman to run a Fortune 500 company when she took over as CEO. She stepped down in 2017 when the company divided successfully into two businesses.
In 2018, the name Cambridge Analytica became synonymous with the misuse of private data to improperly influence elections. A sting caught top executives openly discussing much of what the company had been accused of doing, and CEO Alexander Nix was suspended in the wake. Chief Data Officer Alexander Taylor was named his interim replacement — and stepped down just a month later.
Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus built its business on high-end clothing and personal shopping, trends largely shunned by younger shoppers. That, along with other changes in shopping that have rattled retailers across the board, forced the company to take on $4.4 billion in long-term debt.
In early 2018, the company decided it was time for a change in leadership, and Karen Katz stepped down as CEO. In 2020, the company filed for Chapter 11 protection in early May and stayed open during reorganization, emerging from bankruptcy in September with a debt load reduced by a whopping $4 billion.
Dov Charney founded the iconic brand American Apparel, but his leadership was clouded by a continual stream of sexual misconduct allegations, and he has admitted to multiple trysts with employees. By 2014, the pressure proved too great, and Charney was fired.
The next year, American Apparel filed for bankruptcy, and in 2017, it was acquired by Gildan Activewear. All of its stores shut down shortly after the buyout.
Suzanne Greco joined Subway in 1973 as a sandwich stuffer and rose all the way to CEO in 2015, the same year co-founder and former CEO Fred DeLuca died of cancer. DeLuca happened to be her brother; though no one claimed her ascent was due to nepotism, franchisees revolted as the company's position deteriorated rapidly during her tenure, closing 900 U.S. stores with 500 more set to close by the end of 2018.
She stepped down in May of that year and was replaced by Burger King veteran John Chidsey in 2019. It's still rough going at the sandwich chain, which continued to shutter restaurants.
During her six-year tenure at Hewlett-Packard, Meg Whitman was one of the most powerful women in business, a candidate for governor of California, and the CEO who oversaw one of history's biggest corporate breakups.
Before Whitman stepped down in 2013, she had cost tens of thousands of jobs and jettisoned a huge number of HP assets. She continued on as leader of Hewlett Packard Enterprise through 2017, and became CEO of Quibi, a short-form streaming app that shut down after just six months following its April 2020 launch.
In a contrite yet playful letter of resignation, Andrew Mason announced to his employees in 2013 that he'd been fired as Groupon CEO. The company was a rising star in the industry and a must-have tech stock — until its value dropped to a quarter of its listing price.
His departure came after the company missed its own projections for two straight quarters. Groupon has been on uncertain footing in recent years, with its stock falling to below $20 a share, a far cry from a high of over $520 in 2011.
