CEO Turnover in Large Banks: Does Tail Risk Matter?

Using a unique international dataset, we show that the CEOs of large banks exhibit an increased probability of forced turnover when their organizations are more exposed to idiosyncratic tail risks. The importance of idiosyncratic tail risk in CEO dismissals is strengthened when there is more competition in the banking industry and when stakeholders have more to lose in the case of distress. Overall, we document that the exposure to idiosyncratic tail risk offers valuable signals to bank boards on the quality of the choices made by CEOs and these signals are different from those provided by accounting and market measures of bank performance and by idiosyncratic volatility. In contrast, systematic tail risk is usually filtered out from the firing decision, only becoming important for forced CEO turnovers in the presence of a major variation in the costs that the exposure to this risk generates for shareholders and the organization.