Summer is usually the time of long days and longer vacations, but summer 2025 was a season where the business world’s inviolable godhead, the chief executive officer, looked less and less like a position worth exalting. The CEO became more like a chief excess officer.
Just this week, Nestlé CEO Laurent Freixe stepped down after he failed to disclose an ongoing romantic relationship with a direct subordinate after a tip to a company hotline. The primary instinct in this situation—as seems to be the reflexive instinct for the CEO class—was to deny, deny, deny. That was until additional tips to the company’s hotline led to an investigation and Freixe’s ouster.
More famously, there was the case of Astronomer CEO Andy Byron, caught with his chief people officer on a kiss cam at a Coldplay concert. For purposes of PR, the dead of summer is the absolute worst time to be caught in flagrante mylo xyloto with your “work wife” instead of your real one. These are slow days for the attention economy, when people have plenty of time to memeify the worst day of your life. Astronomer’s response was to produce a viral video with Gwyneth Paltrow (the “consciously uncoupled” ex of Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin), which got some traction with the Us Weekly set, but did nothing to reassure Astronomer’s investors and users, let alone repair Astronomer’s prospects in the marketplace or as a brand.
Is it that CEOs are behaving more poorly or just that we just have greater means to catch them in the act?
I wouldn’t bet any amount of money on these outcomes, though. Expect more executive tomfoolery and more payouts, but with possibly fewer “sweetheart” deals and many fewer Coldplay concerts.
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