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The CEO: The Rise and Fall of Britain's Captains of Industry
The CEOs of Britain's largest companies wield immense power, but we know very little about them. How did they get to the top? Why do they have so much power? Are they really worth that exorbitant salary? Michael Aldous and John Turner provide the answers by telling the story of the British CEO over the past century. From gentleman amateurs to professional managers, entrepreneurs, frauds, and fat cats, they reveal the characters who have made it to the top of the corporate ladder, how they got there, and what their rise tells us about British society. They show how the quality of their leadership influences productivity, innovation, economic development and, ultimately, Britain's place in the world. More recently, issues have arisen regarding high CEO pay, poor performance, and a lack of professionalisation and diversity. Are there lessons from history for those who would seek to reform Britain's flagging corporate economy?
296 pages, Hardcover
Published June 19, 2025
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October 26, 2025
Although the book is anchored in the authors' serious published academic research, Aldous and Turner succeed in presenting the material in an approachable, flowing, and entertaining format for the benefit of the prospective non-academic reader (a distinction that seems to have passed by the Financial Times reviewer). The reader may or may not share all of the authors’ prescriptions for how to improve the corporate governance and performance of British companies (see final chapter), but this book will make them a more informed participant to these topical debates.
The authors have painstakingly compiled a database of 1,397 CEOs representing 475 British companies dating from 1911 to 1999. They use the database to extract a typology of CEOs and follow its chronological evolution during the past century. Beginning with the often benign autocracy of the Gentleman/Aristocrat of pre-WW1, we are progressively taken to the Player (raised to the peerage) of the inter-war years, the Family/Founder-owned business of the first half of C20, to the rise of the post-WW2 Professional Manager, and finally to the Buccaneer of the 1960s and 70s and the Fat Cats at the turn of the century (the ratio of CEO-to-median-worker remuneration oscillated around 20 times from 1911 until the 1980s, after which it steadily climbed to nearly 400 times). In many ways this evolution of the CEO role mirrors the evolution of capitalism and its network of social and financial incentives.
The authors’ motivation for this research was anchored in three reasons (or questions): the importance of the CEO to the performance of their company [the answer turns out to be approx. 10%, both good and bad]; their economic and political power [to affect the rules of the game]; and what their careers tells us about social mobility and diversity [turns out the career insider has the best chance of making a successful CEO .... but still very few women].
The book with interest any reader with curiosity for business history and theory (especially agency theory), social history, or economic history .... as well as, no doubt, the ambitious young man or woman with aspirations to become a CEO! For the latter reader, in the final chapter, the authors have compiled a convenient set of characteristics of the prototype CEO that they will need to either discover in themselves or develop. However, I suggest they should approach the book as both instruction manual and warning, in equal measure: hubris awaits us all round the corner.
The authors rightly highlight how “Financialisation fundamentally changed the career structures and incentives of CEOs ... leading to shorter tenures and increased likelihood of dismissal” [and, this reader would add, combined with technological and transportation changes having compressed time pressures]. The resulting pressure for immediate and persistent quarterly impact on earnings per share led to greater competition for those CEOs who appear to provide it, and hence on CEO compensation. In such a Picketty world, where debt and therefore financial returns grow faster than the nominal economy, the incentives push CEOs towards financial engineering, giving rise to the Fat Cats. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that the Buccaneer business model, dependent as it was on large amounts of debt, first emerged at the same time as Regulation Q in the US was leaking large amounts of Dollars into the British banking system, thus circumventing the draconian Competition and Credit Controls imposed on banks.
Of course, the Fat Cats chapter will irk any CEO who is still in the field or closely involved in it (like the Financial Times reviewer, who also expresses the self-deluding belief that the taking private of British industrial assets solves the agency and governance problem: this might be the sales pitch of an average private equity fund but it is simply not borne out by average result (David Swensen of the Yale Endowment already twenty years explained that similarly timed, similarly sized, and similarly leveraged investments in public equity produced the same returns as private equity).
As much as the still-active CEOs find it difficult to accept how much their financial success (if the authors are correct, by implication 90%) should be attributed to a combination of starting-line genes and leg-ups, luck, and the favourable macro-economic winds in their industry during their particular tenure (an acceptance that ex-CEOs acquire more easily once full retirement provides them with a greater perspective) ..... it is equally true that those who have not been CEOs often find it difficult to accept the intensity of personal cost that is required of the CEO (which few are willing to take or could sustain) in terms of the ever-narrower bandwidth to their life required to successfully compete at that level.
In debates over CEO pay there is often an underlying tendency by many to assume a direct correlation between pay and the level of greed of the individual performing the CEO role. This reader does not believe that the average CEO starts out as a fundamentally different species from the average human. Greed and any intrinsic tendency to always want more (money, acclaim, notoriety, power) is likely to be similarly distributed across the population at birth. And everyone tends to be an average-level rent seeker, meaning that everyone, at the margin, seeks situations where they can extract the maximum personal benefit with the least amount of effort, ie benefit personally from other people's efforts (even academics!). What differs is the strength of the monetary incentives each become exposed to ... and their personal tolerance for warping their inner moral compass and societal empathy in response to those incentives.
Those incentives evolve from within the operation of the combined economic process: capping CEO pay will not work; changing the incentive structure will .... but to do that one would have to change the economic process, starting by re-imposing some commitment mechanisms that guardrail the printing of fiat money and hence the availability of credit. In his inauguration speech in 1933, in the depths of the depression that followed the Great Crash of 1929, Roosevelt said: "Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted ..... Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money" .... he could have been talking about 2008.
The authors have painstakingly compiled a database of 1,397 CEOs representing 475 British companies dating from 1911 to 1999. They use the database to extract a typology of CEOs and follow its chronological evolution during the past century. Beginning with the often benign autocracy of the Gentleman/Aristocrat of pre-WW1, we are progressively taken to the Player (raised to the peerage) of the inter-war years, the Family/Founder-owned business of the first half of C20, to the rise of the post-WW2 Professional Manager, and finally to the Buccaneer of the 1960s and 70s and the Fat Cats at the turn of the century (the ratio of CEO-to-median-worker remuneration oscillated around 20 times from 1911 until the 1980s, after which it steadily climbed to nearly 400 times). In many ways this evolution of the CEO role mirrors the evolution of capitalism and its network of social and financial incentives.
The authors’ motivation for this research was anchored in three reasons (or questions): the importance of the CEO to the performance of their company [the answer turns out to be approx. 10%, both good and bad]; their economic and political power [to affect the rules of the game]; and what their careers tells us about social mobility and diversity [turns out the career insider has the best chance of making a successful CEO .... but still very few women].
The book with interest any reader with curiosity for business history and theory (especially agency theory), social history, or economic history .... as well as, no doubt, the ambitious young man or woman with aspirations to become a CEO! For the latter reader, in the final chapter, the authors have compiled a convenient set of characteristics of the prototype CEO that they will need to either discover in themselves or develop. However, I suggest they should approach the book as both instruction manual and warning, in equal measure: hubris awaits us all round the corner.
The authors rightly highlight how “Financialisation fundamentally changed the career structures and incentives of CEOs ... leading to shorter tenures and increased likelihood of dismissal” [and, this reader would add, combined with technological and transportation changes having compressed time pressures]. The resulting pressure for immediate and persistent quarterly impact on earnings per share led to greater competition for those CEOs who appear to provide it, and hence on CEO compensation. In such a Picketty world, where debt and therefore financial returns grow faster than the nominal economy, the incentives push CEOs towards financial engineering, giving rise to the Fat Cats. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that the Buccaneer business model, dependent as it was on large amounts of debt, first emerged at the same time as Regulation Q in the US was leaking large amounts of Dollars into the British banking system, thus circumventing the draconian Competition and Credit Controls imposed on banks.
Of course, the Fat Cats chapter will irk any CEO who is still in the field or closely involved in it (like the Financial Times reviewer, who also expresses the self-deluding belief that the taking private of British industrial assets solves the agency and governance problem: this might be the sales pitch of an average private equity fund but it is simply not borne out by average result (David Swensen of the Yale Endowment already twenty years explained that similarly timed, similarly sized, and similarly leveraged investments in public equity produced the same returns as private equity).
As much as the still-active CEOs find it difficult to accept how much their financial success (if the authors are correct, by implication 90%) should be attributed to a combination of starting-line genes and leg-ups, luck, and the favourable macro-economic winds in their industry during their particular tenure (an acceptance that ex-CEOs acquire more easily once full retirement provides them with a greater perspective) ..... it is equally true that those who have not been CEOs often find it difficult to accept the intensity of personal cost that is required of the CEO (which few are willing to take or could sustain) in terms of the ever-narrower bandwidth to their life required to successfully compete at that level.
In debates over CEO pay there is often an underlying tendency by many to assume a direct correlation between pay and the level of greed of the individual performing the CEO role. This reader does not believe that the average CEO starts out as a fundamentally different species from the average human. Greed and any intrinsic tendency to always want more (money, acclaim, notoriety, power) is likely to be similarly distributed across the population at birth. And everyone tends to be an average-level rent seeker, meaning that everyone, at the margin, seeks situations where they can extract the maximum personal benefit with the least amount of effort, ie benefit personally from other people's efforts (even academics!). What differs is the strength of the monetary incentives each become exposed to ... and their personal tolerance for warping their inner moral compass and societal empathy in response to those incentives.
Those incentives evolve from within the operation of the combined economic process: capping CEO pay will not work; changing the incentive structure will .... but to do that one would have to change the economic process, starting by re-imposing some commitment mechanisms that guardrail the printing of fiat money and hence the availability of credit. In his inauguration speech in 1933, in the depths of the depression that followed the Great Crash of 1929, Roosevelt said: "Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted ..... Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money" .... he could have been talking about 2008.
January 17, 2026
Chapter 1
· American born poet observed in 1918 that Britain was a country in love with amateurs, and a country unable to critics charming and beautifully mannered incompetents.
· Business leaders are venerated by wider society, while the UK’s snobbery about business leaders and commerce is long standing, making them curious, unloved species.
· Since 1960s the effect of a US CEO’s performance on a company has increased from 10 to 20%.
· Professional experience in fields such as accounting and engineering has increased, but in Britain specifically, corporate leaders have had relatively low levels of education, and specialist management training in comparison to leaders in other countries.
· The CEO is the Prime Minister, the Exco is Cabinet, senior employees are like MPs, and the NEDs are the House of Lords.
Chapter 2
· Aristocratic chairmen were common in the rail industry in the early 20th century, none more so than Great Western Rail, which was overseen by Victor Spencer. His political connections were invaluable for the company, but failed to restructure GWR so all departments were pulling in the correct direction.
· Luck plays a bigger pathway to the top for most CEOs than the often admit. All however have a knack of seizing opportunities with two hands.
· Work ethic was also key, as demonstrated by Thomas Lipton, who came from a working-class background in Glasgow to run what did become the world’s largest tea company. Hard work conquers all was his motto. He possessed an easy, engaging persona that allowed him to engage with commoners and kings alike. He was a people magnet, driven, self-reliant, and full of self-confidence. Whilst these qualities allowed him to build a business, they did not allow him to delegate power, and executive authority.
· Many CEOs in the US / Germany and France started engaging in management training in the early ninetieth century alongside higher-education.
Chapter three
· Family led-businesses were an extension of the cultural critique of the role of amateur aristocrats as corporate leaders. They encouraged patronage and nepotism, were less willing to recruit external professional experts, or adopt modern organisational and managerial structures. They also failed to invest in technology, and other sources of innovation, which restricted their capacity to grow. Each generation the business was passed down to saw its vibrancy and competency stripped away until it ultimately failed. This has become known as the Buddenbrooks effect, that summarised that after three generations, a business would fail. Clogs to Clogs is another metaphor used to explain this challenge.
· Shell, Unilever were both created from emergency M&A. The best M&A does always seem to occur in crises.
· Outsider status was also a motivation for hard work and risk taking as it brought economic, social and political environment. You can see this in the percentage of FTSE 100 CEOs who were MPs prior to their job (30% in the 1900s) to around 0% in 2010.
Chapter four
· The poor quality of business leadership in the post war era was an important contributor to Britain’s economic decline, despite, increase meritocracy. The professional training and education for accountants and engineers has been criticised for a lack of focus on product innovation. American CEOs were more likely to have a sales background. A lack of higher education amongst leaders and formal management training meant that they did not have the intellectual breadth to run a complex organisation. The first US CEO to run a large company have secured an MBA was in 1954 (Procter and Gamble) while it took until 1979 for the same feat to be achieved in Britain. Ironically, as Britain has put more emphasis on higher education, meritocracy has declined.
Chapter five
· As the world has become more financialised, so has the number of CEOs who are fired for poor performance – around 45% in 2010s compared to 10% in the early 1900s.
· The age of CEOs has steadily declined, from around 55 in the 1950s to late 40s in the 2000s. That figure will likely have declined further in the 2010s and 2020s. Did the 1950s though no co-incide with a period of high economic growth?
· Fred Goodwin was a brilliant project manager with incredible attention to detail. The signs of hubris were everywhere however, and the night that the ABM Ambro deal was completed, Fred Goodwin walked into the drinks party to rapturous applause and a cool soundtrack from Reservoir Dogs.
Chapter seven
· There is one issue with saying that the lack of higher education makes UK CEOs worse – that you risk hiring / identifying with people based on credentialism. This has resulted in a narrowing of the pathway to the top of an organisation.
· Good CEOs are relentlessly hard working, have high cognitive ability, curiosity, commitment to learning enhanced through broad experience of work and life, well read, organised, diligent, and attentive to detail, strong interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, ambition, personal purpose, and ability to upset the status quo.
· Insiders Vs outsiders. Insiders are often better leaders than outsiders. Many of the banks that failed during 2008 were run by outsiders who had less loyalty to the company.
· Interestingly, one point that has got lost amongst the move towards a corporate meritocracy has been that become fewer CEOs have come from the aristocracy, this has meant that a lot of their friends / influence does not come from high society. Put another way, the importance of gentry CEOs of their political and social capital in their personal and corporate success acted as a constraint on any egregious behaviour.
· Financialisation has also led to CEOs becoming incentives to fudge numbers, and expand margins. John Browne of BP led the company through a period of cost cutting / asset sweating which some said lead to the H&S / financial mistakes from the Deep Horizon disaster.
· The book incredibly recommends at the end whether companies look at becoming BCorps!
· American born poet observed in 1918 that Britain was a country in love with amateurs, and a country unable to critics charming and beautifully mannered incompetents.
· Business leaders are venerated by wider society, while the UK’s snobbery about business leaders and commerce is long standing, making them curious, unloved species.
· Since 1960s the effect of a US CEO’s performance on a company has increased from 10 to 20%.
· Professional experience in fields such as accounting and engineering has increased, but in Britain specifically, corporate leaders have had relatively low levels of education, and specialist management training in comparison to leaders in other countries.
· The CEO is the Prime Minister, the Exco is Cabinet, senior employees are like MPs, and the NEDs are the House of Lords.
Chapter 2
· Aristocratic chairmen were common in the rail industry in the early 20th century, none more so than Great Western Rail, which was overseen by Victor Spencer. His political connections were invaluable for the company, but failed to restructure GWR so all departments were pulling in the correct direction.
· Luck plays a bigger pathway to the top for most CEOs than the often admit. All however have a knack of seizing opportunities with two hands.
· Work ethic was also key, as demonstrated by Thomas Lipton, who came from a working-class background in Glasgow to run what did become the world’s largest tea company. Hard work conquers all was his motto. He possessed an easy, engaging persona that allowed him to engage with commoners and kings alike. He was a people magnet, driven, self-reliant, and full of self-confidence. Whilst these qualities allowed him to build a business, they did not allow him to delegate power, and executive authority.
· Many CEOs in the US / Germany and France started engaging in management training in the early ninetieth century alongside higher-education.
Chapter three
· Family led-businesses were an extension of the cultural critique of the role of amateur aristocrats as corporate leaders. They encouraged patronage and nepotism, were less willing to recruit external professional experts, or adopt modern organisational and managerial structures. They also failed to invest in technology, and other sources of innovation, which restricted their capacity to grow. Each generation the business was passed down to saw its vibrancy and competency stripped away until it ultimately failed. This has become known as the Buddenbrooks effect, that summarised that after three generations, a business would fail. Clogs to Clogs is another metaphor used to explain this challenge.
· Shell, Unilever were both created from emergency M&A. The best M&A does always seem to occur in crises.
· Outsider status was also a motivation for hard work and risk taking as it brought economic, social and political environment. You can see this in the percentage of FTSE 100 CEOs who were MPs prior to their job (30% in the 1900s) to around 0% in 2010.
Chapter four
· The poor quality of business leadership in the post war era was an important contributor to Britain’s economic decline, despite, increase meritocracy. The professional training and education for accountants and engineers has been criticised for a lack of focus on product innovation. American CEOs were more likely to have a sales background. A lack of higher education amongst leaders and formal management training meant that they did not have the intellectual breadth to run a complex organisation. The first US CEO to run a large company have secured an MBA was in 1954 (Procter and Gamble) while it took until 1979 for the same feat to be achieved in Britain. Ironically, as Britain has put more emphasis on higher education, meritocracy has declined.
Chapter five
· As the world has become more financialised, so has the number of CEOs who are fired for poor performance – around 45% in 2010s compared to 10% in the early 1900s.
· The age of CEOs has steadily declined, from around 55 in the 1950s to late 40s in the 2000s. That figure will likely have declined further in the 2010s and 2020s. Did the 1950s though no co-incide with a period of high economic growth?
· Fred Goodwin was a brilliant project manager with incredible attention to detail. The signs of hubris were everywhere however, and the night that the ABM Ambro deal was completed, Fred Goodwin walked into the drinks party to rapturous applause and a cool soundtrack from Reservoir Dogs.
Chapter seven
· There is one issue with saying that the lack of higher education makes UK CEOs worse – that you risk hiring / identifying with people based on credentialism. This has resulted in a narrowing of the pathway to the top of an organisation.
· Good CEOs are relentlessly hard working, have high cognitive ability, curiosity, commitment to learning enhanced through broad experience of work and life, well read, organised, diligent, and attentive to detail, strong interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, ambition, personal purpose, and ability to upset the status quo.
· Insiders Vs outsiders. Insiders are often better leaders than outsiders. Many of the banks that failed during 2008 were run by outsiders who had less loyalty to the company.
· Interestingly, one point that has got lost amongst the move towards a corporate meritocracy has been that become fewer CEOs have come from the aristocracy, this has meant that a lot of their friends / influence does not come from high society. Put another way, the importance of gentry CEOs of their political and social capital in their personal and corporate success acted as a constraint on any egregious behaviour.
· Financialisation has also led to CEOs becoming incentives to fudge numbers, and expand margins. John Browne of BP led the company through a period of cost cutting / asset sweating which some said lead to the H&S / financial mistakes from the Deep Horizon disaster.
· The book incredibly recommends at the end whether companies look at becoming BCorps!
September 21, 2025
The book represents a compelling and thought-provoking exploration of British corporate leadership from the Victorian era to the present day. With a rich blend of historical narrative, economic analysis, and biographical detail, the authors chart the evolution of the role of the CEO and how it both shaped—and was shaped by—Britain’s economic fortunes.
One of the book’s greatest strengths lies in its meticulous research and the ability of Aldous and Turner to weave together individual stories with broader economic trends. From the industrial titans of the 19th century to the professional managers of the post-war era, and the rise of shareholder capitalism in the late 20th century, each phase of leadership is examined with nuance and insight. The authors show how shifts in ownership, governance, and global competition redefined what it meant to be a successful corporate leader.
The narrative is engaging without sacrificing academic rigor. The authors do an excellent job balancing critical analysis with a clear admiration for the ingenuity and impact of some of Britain’s most iconic CEOs. At the same time, the book does not shy away from examining the causes of decline in certain sectors and companies—offering valuable lessons for today's business leaders.
Ultimately, The CEO is more than just a history of business leadership; it’s a lens through which to view Britain’s changing place in the world economy. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in business history, leadership, or the forces that drive national economic change.
One of the book’s greatest strengths lies in its meticulous research and the ability of Aldous and Turner to weave together individual stories with broader economic trends. From the industrial titans of the 19th century to the professional managers of the post-war era, and the rise of shareholder capitalism in the late 20th century, each phase of leadership is examined with nuance and insight. The authors show how shifts in ownership, governance, and global competition redefined what it meant to be a successful corporate leader.
The narrative is engaging without sacrificing academic rigor. The authors do an excellent job balancing critical analysis with a clear admiration for the ingenuity and impact of some of Britain’s most iconic CEOs. At the same time, the book does not shy away from examining the causes of decline in certain sectors and companies—offering valuable lessons for today's business leaders.
Ultimately, The CEO is more than just a history of business leadership; it’s a lens through which to view Britain’s changing place in the world economy. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in business history, leadership, or the forces that drive national economic change.
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