Life after being a CEO: What Chanda Kochhar, Mistry and Sikka are doing

Consulting, board memberships, new gigs keep former corporate bosses busy, but they are often under greater scrutiny

How a CEO leaves a company is more important than how he or she joins it. But in today’s business environment, the adage could see its resilience being tested. A growing number of leaders have left corporations before their terms ended, for factors ranging from ideological disagreements with their board and predecessors to doubts on their credibility to non-performance. In some cases, there was no apparent reason.  

Does that signal a shift in culture? R Gopalakrishnan, a Tata Sons veteran, says, “In the future, more and more executives will leave companies ahead of time with little or no clarity in