Accountants as CEOs

Masters of efficiency or enemies of exploration?

On a recent international flight I stumbled across a superhero I’d somehow missed: the accountant. First came The Accountant in 2016, with Ben Affleck reconciling ledgers one moment and neutralising bad guys the next; then, in 2025, the sequel arrived, suggesting the studio had found a winning – well, formula. What Affleck and his producers probably don’t realise is that what’s been happening on screen has also been unfolding in real life: accountants, as a new book claims, have claimed the CEO’s chair, in Britain and beyond.

The book is The CEO: The Rise and Fall of Britain’s Captains of Industry, by business historians John Turner and Michael Aldous. It charts the transformation of British corporate leadership over the past century, from the days when companies were steered by founders, engineers, or industry experts, through the era of the generalist ‘gentleman amateur’, to the present dominance of leaders with finance backgrounds. Along the way, Turner and Aldous show how the professionalisation of management, the growth of sprawling corporate bureaucracies, and the post-2008 emphasis on financial prudence have shifted the profile of the typical chief executive.

In Britain, the numbers tell the story. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, fewer than 3% of CEOs had an accounting background, as noted by Turner and Aldous. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, that number had jumped to above 20%. Other numbers back that up. According to Matthew Wilcox of Marks Sattin, 58% of FTSE100 companies now have a chairman or CEO with an accountancy or finance background. This compares to only 24% in the mid 1990s. ‘Fully qualified accounting chairman or CEOs, account for 40% of FTSE100 company leaders.’

Turner expands on the result of such a shift in an interview for the Library of Mistakes podcast. As firms grew larger in the twentieth century, he explains, they developed complex bureaucracies that demanded detailed financial oversight. ‘As firms get larger, there are more complex bureaucracies… that’s what accountants are trained to manage.’ Their expertise in controlling information flows and measuring performance made them attractive candidates for the top job. Yet Turner is clear about the limitations of their training: ‘It doesn’t help them with thinking about the market… or marketing… it definitely doesn’t help them when it comes to thinking about how you deal with people. Their people skills are often horrendous.’ That gap between technical and interpersonal competence lies at the heart of the debate over what is gained – and lost – when accountants take over the corner office.

Yet these trade-offs are not just the ramblings of a business school economics professor.