Do Water CEOs Get Fired for Their Results, or for Company Politics?

When Saur pushed out Patrick Blethon in October 2026, I noticed he had brought former colleagues into his executive team... just like Sabrina Soussan before SUEZ let her go. So I traced 30 years of water CEOs, 659 tenures at 110 companies, to see what gets a CEO fired: results, gender, age, degrees, friends, or corporate politics.

Every number comes from annual reports, filings, Global Water Intelligence, the Wayback Machine, press articles and LinkedIn, and the research archive is right here: https://dww.show/trust-me-bro/

🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️
🚪 Succession planning, insider or outsider: CEOs hired from outside the company were fired about twice as often as internal promotions, yet revenue grew a little faster and operating margins improved more under them (1.8 points up, against 0.2 down under insiders)
🏛️ Corporate governance: state-controlled and private equity-owned water companies fire about twice as often as other owners, but 16 of their 22 firings come from four companies, Sabesp, Copasa, Acea and Saur
🗳️ Company politics, literally: at state-controlled water companies, 8 of 14 firings came within a year of a new governor or mayor, like Sabesp's new CEO, named 26 days after São Paulo's new governor took office
🔁 Change management: outsiders are appointed to trigger change and appoint 3.2 newcomers to the executive team in their first two years, against 2.1 for insiders, but those who appoint four or more are fired 42% of the time against 25%, while the 18 insiders who changed as much were never fired
🎓 Gender, age, nationality, an MBA, a PhD or an elite school: none of them predicts a firing, and the degrees don't even buy a reliable starting-pay premium
💸 The price of an outsider: more than a third of outside hires in US and UK filings got a payment to join, and three in four firings with known terms came with severance, a median disclosed payout of about $2 million
🤝 Bringing your friends: outsiders hire six times more former colleagues than insiders, like Patrick Blethon bringing Xavier Savigny from Otis to Saur, but once the CEO's own background is accounted for, the friends add no statistically relevant firing risk
📉 A bad last year: a loss, a profit warning, an operational failure or a scandal preceded 41% of firings, against 15% of other exits, as when Xylem cut its forecast in July 2013 and Gretchen McClain was out six weeks later

🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜
What gets a water CEO fired, if not their results? A bad last year raises the odds for every CEO, but what sets outsiders apart is a power shift above them: under the board or chairman who appointed them, they were fired 3 times per 100 years in the job, against 7 under a new one, while insiders stayed at 1 either way.
Do fired CEOs do a worse job? No. The shares of companies that fired their CEO beat their market by 3.4 points a year, against 3.3 when the CEO retired as planned.
Should you follow your former boss onto their new executive team? Maybe, but know that when a CEO is fired, half the people they appointed leave the executive committee within two years, against 22% after a planned retirement.
What does it mean for succession planning? Knowing water helps, but knowing the company helps more: outsiders who kept most of the team they inherited were fired only 10% of the time, and CEOs hired from rival water companies were fired in 18% of known departures, against 11% for internal promotions.

#️⃣ Mentioned Links #️⃣]
📌 My investigation on Saur and Patrick Blethon's departure: https://youtu.be/50ZvH3Xv3SE

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.