Why the World Is Suddenly Awash With a Wave of Co-CEOs

(Dreamstime)

Key Points

• The concept of co-CEOs is gaining traction, with recent announcements from Comcast, Spotify, and Oracle adopting shared leadership roles.
• Despite some high-profile failures, such as Salesforce and SAP, the success of co-CEOs often depends on the individuals involved and their existing relationships.
• Co-CEOs remain uncommon, representing only 1.2% of Russell 3000 companies, a figure that has been consistent over the past five years.

Coupling in the C-suite has suddenly become acceptable—at least in terms of companies having co-CEOs.

Co-CEOs, a concept often thought to be unworkable, have suddenly become all the rage, as evidenced by a flurry of recent announcements.

Just this month, Comcast (Brian Roberts and Michael Cavanagh) and Spotify (Alex Norström and Gustav Söderström) have announced a shared chief executive role, both effective January 2026, as well as Oracle (Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia), which has had co-CEOs in the past. Oracle says its new pair of leaders are both CEOs, not co-CEOs.

A number of other high-profile companies have named two CEOs within the past several years as well, including Netflix (Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters), KKR (Joseph Bae and Scott Nuttall), Monster Beverage (Rodney Sacks and Hilton Schlosberg), and Lennar (Stuart Miller and Jon Jaffe).

So what gives? Arguably, the world has become more complex, and in such an environment, perhaps two heads are better than one. But isn’t that offset by the question of ‘Who does what?’

“I’m quite surprised to see these companies moving in that direction, and I’m not sure why they are,” says management guru Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic and executive fellow at Harvard Business School. “To me, it makes no sense, because somebody has got to make the big calls, and today there are a lot of big calls.”

There have been some high-profile co-CEO failures, interestingly and perhaps coincidentally, in enterprise software—the same business in which Oracle looms so large. In recent years, Salesforce twice tried pairing founder and current CEO Marc Benioff, first with Keith Block and then with Bret Taylor. And German software company SAP had American Jennifer Morgan team up with current (and now sole) CEO Christian Klein, which lasted from 2019 to 2020.

On the other hand, it isn’t necessarily the case that co-CEOs will fail. KKR’s Bae and Nuttell who have been ‘Cos’ for almost four years, may be a special case as they had worked together for decades. KKR co-founder Henry Kravis wrote: “When we promoted them to co-CEOs in October 2021, [KKR co-founder] George [Roberts] described their combination as ‘sort of like a good marriage’ since they had been close enough to go on family vacations together since they were in their 20s.” Not every co-CEO pairing has that luxury.

A private equity competitor, Carlyle Group, had success and failure with co-CEOs. Founders David Rubenstein and William (Bill) Conway Jr., led the firm happily it seems from 1987 until 2017. Their successors, Kewsong Lee and now Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, lasted together only two years.

Co-CEOs are still rare. According to research firm Equilar, only 1.2% or 33 of the Russell 3000 have co-CEOs, a number that has remained fairly consistent over the past five years.

Rarer still are ‘3EOs,’ or three chief executives at once. This structure was recently employed by Paramount with George Cheeks (President and CEO of CBS), Chris McCarthy (President and CEO of Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks), and Brian Robbins (President and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon), who operated as ‘the office of the CEO.’ That lasted some 15 months, ending when the company merged with Skydance this past summer.

Bottom line, whether co-CEOs—or 3EOs for that matter—work or not is probably pretty much dependent on the people.

Write to Andy Serwer at andy.serwer@barrons.com. Follow him on X and subscribe to his At Barron’s podcast.