5 high-profile CEOs who were famously ousted from their companies

Thousands of companies are listed on America’s stock exchanges, and there are thousands more that are privately held and have the potential to go public. The crowded modern business landscape is ripe for fraud, misconduct, and bad decisions, and when these issues become public, CEOs are often the first to take the fall.

High-profile CEOs have come under fire countless times for a variety of reasons. Corporate fraud, financial or ethical misconduct, poor performance, and bad business decisions are some of the most common.

Sometimes, CEOs are forcibly dismissed from their roles for egregious conduct, while in other cases, they are politely asked to step down by members of a company’s board of directors. 

5 well-known CEOs who were ousted from their companies

Here are five CEOs who were famously ousted (or politely encouraged to step down) from the chief executive role following corporate drama.

Carlos Ghosn (former CEO of Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance) 

Ghosn was CEO of the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance, which was formed by Renault’s purchase of a minority stake in Nissan. Ghosn directly oversaw Nissan Motor, where he served as chairman, and he is often credited for turning the ailing Japanese automaker around from the start of his tenure in 2001. In 2018, though, Ghosn stepped down due to ethical misconduct.

Nissan launched an investigation into Ghosn for underreporting compensation and for other ethical lapses, including the personal use of company assets. In the fiscal third quarter of 2018, Nissan recorded 9.2 billion yen ($85 million in 2018) that had not been booked in prior fiscal years, which the Japan Times said was tied to Ghosn’s compensation scheme. 

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Nissan removed Ghosn from his positions, but to avoid prison, Ghosn was secretly flown out of Japan to Lebanon, the birthplace of his paternal grandfather, where he held Lebanese citizenship. 

Japan and Lebanon have no extradition treaty, so Ghosn cannot be handed over to Japanese authorities. Ghosn sued Nissan $1 billion for his dismissal, and Nissan sued Ghosn $90 million to recover money from his fraudulent compensation.

Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos founder and former CEO)

Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos on the premise that a prick of a needle on a person’s fingertip could be an easy and less painful way to extract blood and conduct an extensive bloodwork analysis. In 2014, Forbes listed her as the youngest self-made billionaire woman, with a net worth of $4.5 billion. In 2015, Forbes put her on their 30 Under 30 list, which highlights people under 30 years of age for their notable achievements in business. 

Later that year, however, The Wall Street Journal released a series of investigative articles on Theranos, reporting that its claims of conducting a complete blood test from just a few drops of blood were exaggerated. In June 2018, the U.S. filed a case against Holmes and another Theranos executive, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, for defrauding doctors and patients “by making false claims concerning Theranos’s ability to provide accurate, fast, reliable, and cheap blood tests and test results,” among other charges. Holmes resigned as CEO on the same day of the indictment.

The pair was also found to have lied to investors about Theranos' ability to generate about $1 billion in revenue in 2015, when in actuality, the company could only generate modest revenues. In April 2023, Holmes began serving an 11-year, 3-month sentence in federal prison for defrauding investors to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Adam Neumann (WeWork co-founder and former CEO)

Adam Neumann had some early failures starting businesses, but he struck it rich with the 2010 founding of WeWork, a company that took over buildings and leased out shared office space. Small businesses and individuals who couldn’t afford to rent a full suite in an office building could now set up shop in a building that WeWork retrofitted with a modern-looking layout and furniture. 

WeWork started with a small space in Manhattan, and at its peak in 2019, it reportedly had 800 locations in 124 cities worldwide. Neumann served as CEO from 2010 to 2019, when he stepped down just before a planned IPO, exactly when WeWork’s unicorn status started to unravel. 

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The company’s prospectus raised red flags on future profitability, although billions of dollars had been invested to fund an aggressive expansion plan. The company was locked in on long-term leases, but its revenue stream was based on short-term rentals. 

WeWork reportedly had a peak valuation of $47 billion before the planned IPO, but its financial unraveling derailed its IPO hopes and lowered its private value. Neumann then stepped down as CEO—but not before he was given $1.7 billion by the company’s board to sever his ties with WeWork.  The saga was immortalized in the documentary, "WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn."

Travis Kalanick (Uber co-founder and former CEO) 

Travis Kalanick co-founded the ride-hailing app in 2009 and was its CEO from 2010 to 2017. After the first iPhone was sold in 2007, smartphone apps became a popular medium around which newer companies built their businesses. Uber was among the early tech companies that took advantage of the rise in app use, developing a way to connect drivers with riders. 

The app became popular, attracting millions of users in a matter of a few short years. Investors poured in billions of dollars, and the popularity of Uber’s service led to an exponential growth in jobs, with 12,000 employed by 2017. 

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In early 2017, however, accusations of a toxic work culture and sexual harassment went public, and by mid-2017, Uber adopted a set of recommendations designed to “improve our culture, promote fairness and accountability, and establish processes and systems to ensure the mistakes of the past will not be repeated.” 

Still, the damage to Uber’s reputation could not be undone, and responsibility fell to top management. Kalanick was forced to resign as CEO later in 2017, and he stepped down as a director in 2019. 

Dennis Muilenburg (former Boeing CEO)

In 2015, Dennis Muilenburg became Boeing’s 12th CEO since the aerospace company was founded in 1916, but his tenure would be short-lived compared to his predecessors, who typically served 10 years or more. 

Muilenburg joined the company in 1985, and he worked in program management and engineering positions supporting its commercial airplanes and defense businesses for 15 years. He was then promoted to defense contract positions before moving on to executive roles.

Boeing was ambitious in its development of the 737 MAX, a short-haul plane that’s smaller than the 787 Dreamliner and designed to compete with Airbus’s new aircraft, the A320neo. The MAX was based on the 737 model but had bigger engines, and its updated design reduced costs compared to designing a new aircraft outright. 

The MAX faced technical issues, and two fatal accidents raised concerns about Boeing and its management team. In 2018, a MAX aircraft operated by Lion Air, an Indonesian airliner, crashed after takeoff, killing all 189 passengers and crew, and in 2019, a MAX aircraft flown by Ethiopian Airlines crashed six minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 on board. Boeing’s automated flight control system was partly to blame. 

Following the Ethiopian Airlines incident, Muilenburg stepped down as CEO in December 2019.

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Other ousted CEOs worth mentioning

Plenty of other CEOs have also been summarily dismissed in high-profile incidents over the past decades. Here are just a few of them: 

Sam Bankman-Fried is the former CEO of FTX, a now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange. Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO in November 2022, just as the company filed for bankruptcy amid allegations of misusing customers’ money. Once worth as much as $26 billion before turning 30, his net worth all but evaporated with FTX’s demise.

John Stumpf, former CEO of Wells Fargo, resigned in October 2016 after almost a decade in the role. He had to forfeit $41 million in stock awards after Wells Fargo admitted to improper sales practices within its retail bank. The bank was accused of opening millions of accounts for customers without their knowledge.

Bernard Ebbers is the late former CEO of WorldCom, whose assets were acquired by Verizon after the company’s bankruptcy. Ebbers was the co-founder and CEO of the telecommunications company. He was forced to step down in April 2002 after allegations of accounting irregularities came to light, and the company went into bankruptcy. Eventually, investigators discovered $11 billion in accounting fraud. Ebbers received a 25-year prison sentence in 2005 but was released in late 2019 due to poor health. He died at 78 shortly after his release.

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