Cowen Partners in Fortune: Why Boards Are Calling Retired CEOs Back
Fortune’s CEO Daily dug into a trend that keeps showing up in corner offices, from Cracker Barrel to Verizon to Boeing, and turned to Shawn Cole, President of Cowen Partners Executive Search, to explain what’s really driving it: boards are increasingly reaching for retired CEOs because their own pipelines have run dry.
In the piece by Phil Wahba, Shawn is candid about the appeal. Turning to a retired CEO “feels like the easy button to press,” he says, because running a real search when no internal bench exists is a lot of hard work. Cowen Partners’ own research underscores the shift, finding that external hires jumped to 33% of new S&P 500 CEOs last year, up from 18% in 2024. To Shawn, that’s a clear signal that internal benches are “starved” of genuine CEO contenders.
His caution is what gives the piece its edge. Retired CEOs can often get the job done, but hiring executives at the tail end of their careers can amount to “kicking the can down the road.” The real fix, he argues, sits with boards, which need to demand far more robust leadership development so the next opening has a credible internal answer instead of a retirement phone call.
Read the full article in Fortune.
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About Cowen Partners Executive Search
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