2020 Consumer Products Leadership Index

To understand the state of consumer products leadership today, Spencer Stuart has analyzed the composition of leadership teams and boards of the global top 50 consumer products companies by market capitalization, including 21 companies in the Americas, 19 in Europe and 10 in Asia.

Drawing on publicly reported information, we look at how companies organize their top teams and the backgrounds of CEOs, leadership teams and boards.

Highlights include:

• 80% of consumer products CEOs were promoted to the CEO role from within the company and are serving as CEO for the first time.
• 19% of consumer products top 50 executives are women, a slight increase from 17.5% in 2019.
• 31% (versus 28% last year) of all board members are women, as are 36% of non-executive directors (versus 35% in 2019).
• Twenty-six companies (52%) added at least one new non-executive director (NED) to the board, compared with 33 companies (66%) in 2019.
• More than half (28 of 50) of board chairs have been in their position for less than three years, including nine elected in the past year.
• On average, board chairs have been in their position for four years.
• Boards have 3.85 committees on average; the five largest companies by market capitalization tend to have more committees — 4.75, on average.

Click here to read the full report.