A decade ago, the corporate landscape was filled with rock star chief executives, men (they were overwhelmingly male) who inhabited such a rarefied position that they could not easily be challenged by underlings.

No longer. Last week Strategy&, the consulting arm of PwC, released its latest survey on CEOs. It showed that the rate of turnover at the top of the world’s largest 2,500 companies reached 17.5 per cent last year, the highest since the survey started in 2000.

The good news for CEOs was that three quarters of these departures were internally planned, and only about a fifth were “involuntary” — ie firings. This ratio was little changed from earlier years. But the bad news (or goodish, depending on your perspective) was that the trigger for ejections has changed. A decade ago, half of all expulsions were triggered by poor financial performance, and less than a tenth by “ethical lapses”, PwC says.