Spike in number of management changes at public companies in August may indicate increased CIO turnover in coming months

The number of management changes at public companies–from directors down to vice presidents–nearly doubled last month, from 762 in July to 1,463 in August, according to Liberum Research, a company that tracks changes in top management for investors interested in buying or selling stocks based on such news.  The number of management changes in August exceeded monthly averages of around 1100 that Liberum had been tracking prior to July.  Richard Jacovitz, Liberum’s senior vice president and director of research, thinks the spike in August might have compensated for the drop off in management changes in July, which in turn might have been due to summertime lulls in business activity. 

Among the changes in August, Liberum counted 185 CEO changes at public companies in August compared with 71 the previous month; 172 CFO changes in August compared with 80 in July; and 17 CIO changes in August (I counted 19.) 

Liberum’s research suggests to me that we’ll likely see increased amounts of CIO turnover in the next couple of months as these new CEOs set new business strategies and assemble their own new management teams to execute them.  

Among the companies hiring and losing CEOs in August according to Liberum Research were Callaway Golf, Symbol Technologies, Adolor Corp., Cray Inc., Magic Software, Lattice Semiconductor, Doral Financial, Torvec Inc. and BKF Capital.  We’ll see if these companies hire new IT execs in the coming year.  If you get one of these jobs, you might want to check out CIO’s Ten Survival Tactics for Your First Year on the Job.

Do any of you read On the Move, my roundup of CIO announcements that appears in every first of the month issue of CIO? If so, please use the “Add Comment” mechanism on this blog to let me know what you think of On the Move, what you’d like to see in it, or how On the Move should differ from this blog.  Now that I’m maintaining this blog on a daily basis, my editor and I want to differentiate On the Move from this blog to make the best use of each medium, and your feedback is important in determining the changes we make.