The average CEO from a number of countries around the world is a 54 year-old male who attended Harvard, Oxford or Cambridge University, according to research and analysis into individual CEO background and profile information by Qlik (NASDAQ:QLIK), a leader in data discovery. These are just some of the key findings of Where Do CEOs Come From, an interactive app based on QlikView, a user-centric business intelligence platform.
The app combines a range of background data collated in July 2014 on the current UK FTSE 100 and 250 CEOs, as well as CEOs from the top companies across Asia Pac, Germany and Switzerland. The research took in data looking at a range of aspects including where CEOs were born, gender breakdown, where they went to university, the subjects they studied and their previous roles.
Analysis of this data finds that, after economics and business, engineering was the most popular subject studied at university, with law close behind. Further to this, although Harvard and the Oxbridge institutions came out as the most popular universities, the University of Manchester, Imperial College London and Tokyo University were top places for CEOs to attend.
Main facts from the research include:
Gender
- 96% of CEOs from across the world are Male, only 4% female.
- India has the highest proportion of female CEOs – 8%. UK and Australia had the next highest proportion, but still only with 5%. By contrast, the CEOs in Japan and Hong Kong were all male.
- All of India’s female CEOs head up Finance companies.
Education
- 92% of CEOs are University graduates
- The most popular subject studied by women was Business, while the most popular subject studied by men was Economics.
- Nearly a fifth (18%) of CEOs from around the world have MBAs
On the Job
- One third of Swiss CEOs are actually foreign.
- Japan has the highest churn when it comes to CEOs – with 68% having been in the job for less than 5 years. That’s 16% higher than the average percentage of CEOs across the globe, which sees 52% having been in the job for less than 5 years.
- The most popular position to have formerly been held by a CEO was Managing Director, with 65 (9%) of our CEOs from across the world having been one before. 43 were from Finance backgrounds - CFO or Finance Director (6%), while 34 were Chief Operating Officers (5%).
- Interestingly, the second most popular former role in the UK was Chief Operational Officer – 9%.
“After initially looking at the FTSE 100 and 250 CEOs last year, we wanted to take our research further and see what the make-up of a more Global CEO was,” said Sean Farrington, RVP Northern Europe and MD UK&I at Qlik. “Interestingly, the average CEO is pretty similar in each country we looked at – generally a male in their fifties who had been educated at one of the world’s most prestigious universities.”
Where Do CEOs Come From is a fully-interactive QlikView application which is available online, via smartphones and tablets. See what you can discover about CEOs from around the world at www.wheredoceoscomefrom.com