How to find companies with a new CEO or CFO

A new CEO or CFO is one of the clearest buying signals there is: the event is public, the date is fixed and the person is named. The hard part is finding the changes early, and for free. Public companies must disclose them to the SEC. Private companies announce them when they choose, so you need a few more places to look.

• Key takeaway: for public companies, SEC EDGAR is the dated primary source. Search Form 8-K filings for Item 5.02.
• Key takeaway: most CEO changes happen at private companies, so newsrooms, press wires and trade press do most of the work.
• Key takeaway: record the date the leader started, not the date you found the news. The window runs from the start date.

Form 8-K is the report US public companies file when a material event happens. Item 5.02 is titled “Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers.” It covers the appointment of a new principal executive officer, president, principal financial officer, principal accounting officer or principal operating officer, and the departure of those officers and of directors.

The filing must give the new officer’s name, position and the date of the appointment. Unless otherwise specified, a Form 8-K is due within four business days after the event. One exception matters for timing: if the company announces the appointment another way, such as a press release, it may delay the 8-K until the day of that announcement. Either way, the filing carries a date you can check.

Step by step: find new CEO and CFO appointments in EDGAR

1. Open EDGAR full-text search at sec.gov/edgar/search. It covers the full text of electronic filings since 2001, including exhibits.
2. Type an exact phrase in quotation marks, such as "Item 5.02" together with "Chief Executive Officer" or "Chief Financial Officer". Quotation marks match the words in that order.
3. Open the more search options and set the filing type to 8-K. Add 8-K/A if you also want amended reports.
4. Set the filed date range. "Last 30 days" is a good default for a weekly check; use a custom range in yyyy-mm-dd format for anything else.
5. Narrow by principal executive offices location if you sell to one state or region.
6. Open each result from the Form & File column. Read the Item 5.02 text and the attached press release, usually Exhibit 99.1, for the start date and the leader’s background.
7. Record the company, the person, the role, the effective date and the filing link. Drop departures without a named successor unless you sell to interim leaders.

EDGAR only covers companies that file with the SEC, and most new CEOs are elsewhere. Challenger, Gray & Christmas counted 1,226 CEO exits announced at US companies in the first eight months of 2026, of which 243 were at public companies (report published Sep 24, 2026). For the rest, use these free sources.

State filings are a confirmation source, not a discovery source. In California, for example, stock corporations file a Statement of Information every year and should file a new one when the information on it changes; plain copies are free on bizfile Online.

Whatever the source, confirm two things before you act: that the change is about this company and not a parent or sister company, and that it still holds. Interim appointments and announced-but-not-started leaders need a note, because the window starts when the person takes the job.

New leaders change things early. McKinsey studied the major moves that almost 600 CEOs made in their first two years in the role (Strategy & Corporate Finance blog, Jun 16, 2016). A management reshuffle was the most common move, and CEOs hired from outside were more likely to make six of the nine strategic moves studied.

An earlier McKinsey Quarterly article (Oct 2013) split 365 new CEOs into those who reallocated capital quickly in their first three years and those who moved slowly. Between 1990 and 2010, the CEOs who reallocated early generated materially stronger returns for shareholders than those who waited.

Neither study measures vendor decisions directly, and both are about large public companies. What they show is that budgets, teams and priorities move most in a leader’s first years, which is when a supplier has a reason to be heard. A widely shared claim that 70% of new executives buy within their first 100 days could not be traced to a source, so it is not used here.

Aim for the first 90 days after the leader starts. SalesOne’s signal library counts a new executive as a buying signal for up to 180 days, because reviews of budgets and vendors can run two quarters. Inside that, S1 agents use a 90-day response window for a new leader: accounts with an open window go to the top of the list, with the date to reach out by.

Do not write in week one. Most new leaders spend their first weeks listening. The best time is after they have settled and before the first plan is fixed, which in practice is the first half of the window.

• Name the change and its date, and say what it usually means for someone in their role.
• Offer one specific outcome tied to what a new leader reviews first: costs, reporting, the team or a stalled project.
• Write to the people around the new leader too. A new CFO often hands the review to a controller or a finance director.
• Skip congratulations as the whole message. Everyone sends them.

S1 agents start every account from a dated event inside its window, such as a new CEO named in a Form 8-K, a press release or trade press. Each trigger keeps its source link and date, and the agents check that it is about this company and that it still holds. Companies without a trigger in its window are turned down with a reason.

In SalesOne research runs (Sept–Oct 2026, 248 accounts), the median newest trigger was 59 days old at delivery, and 85% were 90 days or under. A person approves every message before it is sent. S1 agents do the homework. Your team builds the relationship.