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.
