Andy Tannen
Andy Tannen

CEO turnovers were fast and furious among the largest U.S. public companies in the first quarter of 2026. New CEOs were announced by Walmart, Disney, Procter & Gamble, PayPal and HP. In the second quarter, turnovers have continued: Dow and Best Buy announced new CEOs and you may have heard that Apple also made an April announcement. On May 1, Occidental Petroleum named a new CEO.

The corporate communications teams at these companies were very busy with these releases, which obviously generated a flood of coverage in financial, trade and social media/podcasts. Early in my 46-year career, I was taught by some very smart people at Hill and Knowlton that when you announce a new CEO and receive requests from priority media for interviews, you should wait at least several months until the new CEO has had time to develop their strategies before moving forward.

But, according to an academic study published in 2025, maybe the “waiting period” to schedule the interviews should be used for corporate comms leaders get to know their CEO and what his or her short-term priorities will be. This discussion can lead to newsworthy announcements covering new products, new deployments of AI and other technologies and new hires. The study, conducted by four professors ("Agent-Oriented Impression Management: Who Wins When Firms Publicize Their New CEOs?" by Hyunjung Yoon et al – Journal of Management), reviewed the communications for 557 CEO succession events at S&P 1500 companies from 2009 to 2013.

The researchers looked at the “frequency and centrality” of new CEO mentions in company press releases and social media (Twitter, now X) during the year following their appointment. They also tracked financial analysts’ ratings of the company during the CEO’s first year. Longer term, they tracked CEO pay, the number of directorships CEOs held and CEO longevity at the company.

While corporate communications practitioners have always known there was value in new CEO external communications, this study suggests that more frequent and effective communications increased financial analyst ratings in the CEO’s first year. According to Harvard Business Review, which wrote about the study, “the researchers estimated that an increase in communication of one standard deviation above the mean was associated with an increase in market capitalization of roughly $213 million” (Harvard Business Review Nov./Dec. 2025 hard copy: "Why Your PR Team Should Go All Out for a New CEO").

If you’re like me and don’t speak the language of statistics very well, the “more than one standard deviation” means that to earn this higher valuation, you must communicate more frequently and effectively than the average company via your press releases and social media posts. Obviously, increasing “significant” communications about the new CEO in the first year is well worth generating the increase in investment valuation to all stakeholders.

The study also found that increasing significant CEO communications in the first year led to increases, over several years, in CEO pay vs. peers (184 percent), the number of board seats the CEO was appointed to (40 percent) and reduced the likelihood of the CEO leaving the company (by 40 percent). The first two benefits seem more important to the CEO than to the company but the third benefit, keeping a great CEO on board, is obviously extremely valuable to the company as well as the CEO (the Apple model).

New CEOs are under a ton of pressure: they must provide effective leadership in the new world of AI, see-sawing energy prices and changing tariffs that alter supply chains, while improving growth and profitability.

This study suggests that newly appointed CEOs should devote more time to their communications team in their first year in office for the good of the company and their own benefit. Working together, the CEO and communications leaders should develop a plan leveraging press releases, social media, strategic interviews and thought leadership tactics that can maximize the valuation of the company in a year. And then they need to implement it.

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Andy Tannen is president of Tannen Corporate Communications, a corporate reputation consultancy. Previously, he worked in corporate communications at Publicis Groupe's MSL for 28 years, with clients such as IBM, United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, AstraZeneca, Roche, Honeywell, BP and many other companies.