LEADERSHIP

Lindt & Sprüngli has brought back its former chief executive after a difficult year in Europe. The decision offers speed, memory and credibility. It also raises the question every board should ask before recalling a past leader: does the company need someone who knows the old system—or someone able to see that the system has changed?

By Frank Farnel | Responsible Public Affairs | Research cut-off: October 20, 2026, 04:00 UTC

Executive Summary

On October 19, 2026, Lindt & Sprüngli announced that Group CEO Adalbert Lechner would leave immediately. Dieter Weisskopf, the company’s vice-chair and its chief executive from 2016 to 2022, returned as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent successor, expected in the second quarter of 2027. Lindt also changed the leadership of its German and Austrian businesses.^[1]

The choice is understandable. Lindt needs operational speed during its most important trading season, after two reductions in its 2026 sales outlook and a difficult European performance. A leader who knows the people, factories, brands and distributors can act without spending months learning the institution. Yet that same familiarity can narrow the diagnosis. Weisskopf inherits a company whose pricing, consumer demand and geographic growth pattern are not those he left in 2022.

Research offers a sober counterweight to the mythology of the triumphant comeback. A study of more than 6,000 CEO tenures found 167 returning, or “boomerang,” chief executives and reported that the firms they led performed worse, on average, than comparable companies led by first-time CEOs. The study does not prove that returning leaders cause weak performance: boards usually recall them when circumstances are already difficult. It does show that prior success is not a reliable forecast of second-term results.^[5]

The practical distinction is not between insiders and outsiders, or between old and new. It is between restoration and renewal. Restoration re-establishes control, clarifies priorities and repairs execution. Renewal changes the assumptions, capabilities and leadership bench that produced the problem. A returning CEO can be very good at the first. The board must ensure that familiarity does not prevent the second.

Three cases clarify the choice. Lindt is a live test of a time-limited return. Disney shows that a returning CEO can stabilize strategy and eventually deliver a named successor, although the original two-year mandate required extension. Starbucks shows the harder outcome: Howard Schultz’s third period in charge produced major investment and a handover, but the board replaced his successor after seventeen months and ultimately turned to an external operator.

The board’s task is therefore to govern the return as an exception with a measurable mandate. It should define what must be stabilized, which old assumptions must be independently retested, how authority will transfer to the next leader and when the returning executive will leave. Otherwise, a move intended to buy time may merely postpone the succession problem that made the comeback necessary.

Key Evidence

• October 19, 2026: Lindt appointed former CEO Dieter Weisskopf as interim chief with immediate effect and said it expected to appoint a permanent successor in the second quarter of 2027.^[1]
• H1 2026: Lindt reported 4.3% organic sales growth, produced by an 11.8% price contribution and a 7.5% decline in volume/mix. Europe’s organic sales fell 2.1%, while North America grew 12.7%.^[3]
• More than 6,000 CEO tenures: the 2020 boomerang-CEO study identified 167 returning chiefs and found materially weaker average stock performance than at matched firms led by first-time CEOs. This is an association, not proof of causation.^[5]
• November 2022 to March 2026: Bob Iger returned to Disney on an initial two-year mandate; Josh D’Amaro became CEO on March 18, 2026.^[8][10]
• April 2022 to August 2024: Starbucks moved from Howard Schultz’s interim return to Laxman Narasimhan and then to external hire Brian Niccol, illustrating that a completed handover is not necessarily a completed succession.^[11][12]

The Immediate Attraction of the Known Leader

When performance deteriorates quickly, boards do not experience the succession question as an abstract exercise in leadership development. They experience it as a compression of time. Investors want an explanation. Employees want to know who can decide. Customers and suppliers are reading every signal. The annual plan still has to be delivered while the organization is absorbing the removal of its chief executive.

A former CEO offers three forms of compression.

The first is context compression. The returning leader already knows how the company makes money, which relationships carry informal influence and where the formal organization chart conceals operational dependency. That knowledge is especially valuable in a seasonal consumer business such as chocolate, where pricing, production, promotions and retail inventory must converge months before the customer makes a purchase.

The second is trust compression. Senior managers, bankers, distributors and investors do not need a biography lesson. Even those who disagreed with the former CEO understand how that person tends to decide. Predictability can restore movement before confidence has fully returned.

The third is authority compression. An unfamiliar interim executive may spend weeks establishing whether the role is merely custodial. A successful former CEO arrives with a record and a network. The organization assumes that the board expects action.

Those advantages are real. They also produce the central danger. The returning leader’s knowledge is not a neutral map. It is an interpretation built during an earlier period. The relationships that accelerate action may also filter dissent. The authority that clears a blockage may revive an old hierarchy. A celebrated track record can turn hypotheses into instructions before the evidence has been reconsidered.

This is why a boomerang appointment should not be treated as a personality story. It is a governance design choice. The relevant question is not “Was this leader successful before?” It is “Which part of the present problem does previous success equip this person to solve, and which part might it prevent the organization from seeing?”

The Theory: Familiarity Dividend, Imprinting Penalty

Leadership research has long challenged the idea that executives encounter organizations objectively. Donald Hambrick and Phyllis Mason’s upper-echelons theory argued that strategic choices and performance are partially shaped by the backgrounds and cognitive frames of top managers.^[6] Experience helps leaders simplify complexity. It also directs attention toward some signals and away from others.

That tension is unusually strong for a returning CEO. The executive does not simply know the company. The executive helped make the company knowable in a particular way. Reporting lines, investment criteria, favored markets, internal language and the careers of senior colleagues may all bear the imprint of the first tenure. A comeback therefore carries both a familiarity dividend and an imprinting penalty.

The dividend is highest when the problem is one of lost coordination: decisions have slowed, the strategy is understood but execution has fractured, or external stakeholders need reassurance that the institution can still act. The penalty is highest when the problem is a change in the environment or business model: customers have altered their behavior, technology has shifted the economics, regulation has redrawn the market, or the old strategy itself created the vulnerability.

Research on insider CEOs reinforces the distinction. Qi Zhu, Songcui Hu and Wei Shen found that new insider CEOs with more board experience at the same firm tended to make less strategic change, while experience on other boards was associated with more change. Their finding does not concern boomerang CEOs alone, but the mechanism matters here: deep firm-specific exposure can strengthen commitment to the status quo unless it is counterbalanced by perspectives formed elsewhere.^[7]

The boomerang-CEO study by Christopher Bingham, Bradley Hendricks, Travis Howell and Kalin Kolev examined more than 6,000 CEO tenures between 1992 and 2017 and identified 167 returning leaders. Its matched analysis found that companies led by returning CEOs underperformed those led by first-time CEOs by an average of 10.1 percentage points in annual stock performance. The reported disadvantage was larger when the returning executive had founded the company or served for a long first tenure.^[5]

That figure deserves disciplined interpretation. Returning CEOs are not randomly assigned. They are often called back because a company is already under pressure, and stock returns reflect much more than one individual. The study is evidence against presuming a comeback advantage, not evidence that every returning executive will fail. Its deeper lesson is that company-specific knowledge depreciates. What looked like irreplaceable experience can become a commitment to the conditions under which that experience was earned.

The Re-entry Test

A board considering a former CEO should evaluate four dimensions before discussing charisma, loyalty or legacy.

Test	Board question	Evidence required	Failure signal
1. Mandate	What specific condition must the returning CEO stabilize or change?	A short list of outcomes, decision rights and measures with a time horizon.	The mandate is expressed as “restore confidence” or “return to growth” without operational definition.
2. Distance	Which assumptions from the first tenure must be retested independently?	Fresh customer evidence, external benchmarks, dissenting scenarios and a review not controlled by the returning team.	The old strategy is described as timeless and current problems are attributed only to poor execution.
3. Counterweight	Who can challenge a leader with more institutional authority than almost anyone else?	An independent chair or lead director, empowered executives and direct board access for critical functions.	Former lieutenants return, dissenters leave and the board becomes an audience.
4. Exit	How will the company become less dependent on the returning CEO each quarter?	A search timetable, candidate development, staged transfer of decisions and a defined post-transition role or clean departure.	The interim period repeatedly extends, the successor remains invisible and every important relationship routes through the former chief.

The four tests are deliberately sequential. A board that cannot define the mandate cannot know what kind of distance is required. Without distance, it cannot design an effective counterweight. Without a counterweight, the exit plan is vulnerable to the returning CEO’s judgment about when the institution is ready—which is precisely the conflict the board should govern.

Case One: Lindt’s Fast Return Meets a New Demand Problem

Lindt’s announcement is unusually clear about the temporary nature of the appointment. Weisskopf returned immediately, the external search began, and the company identified the second quarter of 2027 as the expected appointment window. He also stated that his task was to restore momentum and hand the company to the next CEO.^[1] That is a stronger starting design than an undefined comeback.

The institutional familiarity is substantial. Weisskopf joined Lindt in 1995, held senior finance and operating responsibilities, served as Group CEO from October 2016 through September 2022 and remained on the board, eventually becoming vice-chair. His successor, Lechner, was hardly an outsider: he had spent 33 years with the group and had led its German business before taking the top job.^[2] The October 2026 change is therefore not a simple exchange of new for old. It is a reallocation of authority within a long-standing leadership system.

The operating evidence explains the urgency. Lindt’s July half-year presentation reported organic sales growth of 4.3% to CHF 2.33 billion. But the composition mattered more than the headline. Pricing contributed 11.8%; volume and mix fell 7.5%. Europe, which generated almost half of group sales, declined 2.1% organically, while North America rose 12.7% and the rest of the world 10.2%. Management said it intended to stabilize volumes in the second half of 2026 and restore volume growth in 2027.^[3]

By September, the company had cut its full-year organic sales-growth forecast for a second time, from the 4–6% range reaffirmed in July to 0–2%, according to Reuters. Its shares had lost roughly a quarter of their value in 2026 by the time the leadership change was announced.^[4]

This is where the distinction between restoration and renewal becomes practical. Lindt can probably benefit immediately from Weisskopf’s ability to coordinate factories, markets and the board before the holiday season. Yet the harder question is not whether Lindt can execute its historical premium strategy more firmly. It is whether price elasticity, affordability and consumption occasions have changed enough to require a different operating model in Europe.

The company’s own July account already contained elements of adaptation: selective price decreases in Germany and Switzerland, new formats and price points, increased brand investment, innovation and geographic expansion.^[3] The board should now resist converting the CEO change into a claim that execution alone was the problem. A 7.5% volume/mix decline is also information about the market’s response to the proposition.

Lindt’s governance structure makes the counterweight test important. The interim CEO is simultaneously vice-chair of the board, while Ernst Tanner serves as executive chair. The arrangement may accelerate alignment, but it concentrates institutional memory at the top. The search process must therefore be able to question the assumptions of both the outgoing operating leadership and the board leaders who oversaw it. Otherwise, a familiar hand may steady the machine without recalibrating it.

Case Two: Disney Turns a Comeback Into a Bridge—Eventually

Disney’s experience shows both the potential and the elastic nature of a time-limited return.

When the board brought Bob Iger back on November 20, 2022, it gave him a two-year mandate: set the strategic direction for renewed growth and work with the board to develop a successor. The decision removed Bob Chapek, whom Iger had handed the company in February 2020.^[8] In July 2023, however, the board extended Iger’s contract through the end of 2026, saying more time was required to complete the transformation and position a successor.^[9]

The extension could be read as evidence that the original timetable was unrealistic or that the company remained dependent on the returning chief. Both interpretations contain truth. Disney was confronting streaming economics, creative performance, the future of ESPN, cost pressure and an activist campaign. A two-year bridge across all of those issues was ambitious. At the same time, the need to extend a comeback illustrates how easily a temporary solution can expand when the returning leader becomes the organizing principle of the turnaround.

Disney did eventually produce a concrete transfer. In February 2026 the board named Josh D’Amaro, a 28-year Disney veteran who led the company’s $36 billion Experiences segment, to become CEO on March 18. Dana Walden became president and chief creative officer. Iger moved into a senior-adviser and director role through December 31, 2026.^[10]

That outcome meets important parts of the re-entry test. The returning CEO’s mandate evolved into specific strategic priorities; the board created a succession process; internal candidates received visible operating scope; and decision authority transferred to a named chief. The remaining caution lies in shadow authority. Iger’s continued advisory and board presence can preserve context, but D’Amaro’s legitimacy depends on the organization learning quickly that advice and decision are not the same thing.

Disney’s case should not be simplified into either triumph or failure. The comeback bought the company time and produced a successor. It also lasted longer than originally promised and followed an earlier succession that collapsed in less than three years. The lesson is not that extensions are always wrong. It is that each extension should trigger a governance review: what objective condition changed, what successor-development work remains, and which decisions must already move away from the returning CEO?

Case Three: Starbucks Completes the Handover but Not the Succession

Howard Schultz’s 2022 return to Starbucks was his third period leading the company. He replaced Kevin Johnson as interim president and CEO in April 2022, during a rapid unionization campaign and a broader argument about the store and employee experience. An independent assessment commissioned by the board later recorded that Starbucks suspended share repurchases and announced $1 billion in fiscal 2022 investments in employees and stores. The same assessment also documented adverse administrative-law decisions connected to aspects of the company’s response to organizing, while noting that those decisions were subject to review.^[11]

Schultz’s return therefore demonstrates both sides of concentrated founder authority. It allowed Starbucks to mobilize capital and attention around a recognizable idea of the company. It also placed a historically powerful leader at the center of a labor-relations crisis in which legal boundaries, employee trust and the founder’s own interpretation of Starbucks culture were deeply entangled.

The formal succession happened. Laxman Narasimhan was selected in September 2022, joined the company in October and became CEO in March 2023. Yet on August 13, 2024, Starbucks announced that Narasimhan would step down immediately and that Brian Niccol, then CEO of Chipotle, would take over the following month. Starbucks described Niccol as a proven external operator; Schultz publicly endorsed him.^[12]

The sequence matters more than any verdict on the individuals. A returning leader can prepare a successor, complete the ceremonial handover and still leave unresolved questions about the strategy, operating system or authority required for the next chapter. Succession is not complete when the new CEO receives the title. It is complete when the organization can execute, adapt and retain confidence without needing the former leader to validate the direction.

Starbucks ultimately reached outside the institution for a leader whose record was associated with retail execution and brand revival. By 2026 the company was presenting progress under Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” plan, including operating changes, store investment and a fiscal 2028 framework.^[13] Those later developments do not retroactively prove that the earlier transition was a failure. They show that the board’s diagnosis changed. The capability required was no longer only custodianship of Starbucks’ heritage. It was a new operating translation of that heritage.

What These Cases Change for Leadership Practice

The first lesson is that speed and novelty are different assets. A former CEO can restore decision velocity more quickly than an external hire. That does not mean the former CEO is more likely to identify a new strategic model. Boards should value the speed explicitly and procure novelty elsewhere—through the permanent search, independent market work, refreshed directors or executives with genuinely different experience.

The second is that the returning CEO should not own the historical verdict. A comeback naturally produces a narrative: the company lost its way after the respected leader departed. Sometimes that is partly true. It is rarely a sufficient diagnosis. The board should commission a fact pattern covering customer behavior, capital allocation, operating decisions, talent and governance across both tenures. The point is not to distribute blame. It is to prevent the return itself from determining the explanation.

The third is that interim leaders still make long-term choices. Pricing architecture, executive appointments, product investment and organizational design cannot always wait for the permanent successor. But every irreversible decision reduces that successor’s strategic room. The mandate should therefore separate actions needed to stop deterioration from choices that define the next era.

The fourth is that a search deadline is not an exit plan. Lindt’s expectation of a second-quarter 2027 appointment is useful. The board must also specify how authority will transfer, whether the returning CEO remains on the board, how the new CEO can revisit interim decisions and when employees and external stakeholders will hear directly from the successor.

Finally, the board must evaluate its own role. If the returning CEO is being asked to correct problems that developed while the same directors oversaw the company, changing the operator may be necessary but incomplete. Reuters reported that Vontobel analysts called for scrutiny of Lindt’s board and argued that it could have intervened earlier.^[4] A board cannot credibly demand fresh diagnosis from management while exempting its own assumptions, information flows and timing from review.

What Leaders Should Do Now

Write the mandate before announcing the person

Define three to five outcomes for the interim period. Distinguish stabilization measures—cash, service, seasonal execution, regulatory continuity—from renewal decisions about portfolio, organization and capital. Publish enough of that mandate to make the appointment accountable without disclosing competitively sensitive detail.

Create an independent diagnosis channel

Give the board direct access to customer evidence, workforce signals and external benchmarks that do not pass through the returning CEO’s team. Ask which conditions have changed since the first tenure and which parts of the prior playbook would fail under current economics.

Protect the executive bench from gravitational pull

A returning leader’s authority can make capable executives become implementers again. Give key leaders explicit decision domains, measure their performance and expose them to the board. A comeback that weakens the bench makes the next succession harder even if short-term performance improves.

Keep the permanent search strategically open

Do not write a role specification that merely describes the returning CEO at a younger age. Test internal and external candidates against the company’s future strategic chapter. Familiarity with the culture is valuable; the capacity to alter the culture may be more important.

Govern the overlap

Before naming the successor, decide whether the former CEO will leave, advise or remain as a director. Specify duration, subjects and decision rights. The new chief must be able to hear the predecessor without governing through the predecessor.

Set a dependency-reduction measure

Each quarter, the board should be able to show that fewer critical relationships, approvals and strategic judgments depend uniquely on the returning leader. That is the real measure of a successful bridge. If dependency rises, the institution is borrowing stability at the expense of succession.

Conclusion: Return Without Reversion

Boards recall former CEOs for a reason. In a difficult moment, memory has operational value. A leader who knows the people and the machine can restore pace, interpret weak signals and make consequential decisions before an outsider has learned where authority really sits.

But organizations do not pause between tenures. Customers change, technologies mature, colleagues depart and the consequences of the first term continue to unfold. The returning leader is familiar with the company, yet the company is no longer identical to the one that made that leader successful.

Lindt’s appointment of Dieter Weisskopf may prove exactly right for the next several months. The company has defined the role as interim, started a search and named the outcome the returning CEO is meant to deliver: renewed momentum for someone else to inherit. The more difficult work is now to make that promise institutional rather than personal.

A comeback succeeds when the former chief uses memory to accelerate learning—not to replace it; uses authority to strengthen other leaders—not to recentralize dependence; and leaves the organization with more credible choices than it had on the day of return. The aim is not to recover the past. It is to make the company governable without the person who came back.

Glossary

Boomerang CEOA former chief executive who returns to lead the same organization for a subsequent tenure.Interim CEOA temporary chief executive appointed to exercise the role’s authority while the board selects or prepares a permanent leader.Upper-echelons theoryThe proposition that organizational choices and outcomes are partly shaped by top executives’ experiences, values and cognitive frames.ImprintingThe enduring effect of earlier conditions or leaders on an organization’s structures, routines and assumptions.Shadow authorityInfluence exercised by a former leader after formal decision rights have transferred, potentially weakening the successor’s practical control.Volume/mixA sales measure combining the effect of units sold and the relative contribution of different products, separated from price and currency effects.

References and Further Reading

Official and Corporate Sources

1. Lindt & Sprüngli, “Lindt & Sprüngli Announces Leadership Changes,” ad hoc announcement distributed by EQS News Service and reproduced by Deutsche Börse, October 19, 2026.
2. Lindt & Sprüngli, “Change in Group Management of Lindt & Sprüngli,” June 27, 2022.
3. Lindt & Sprüngli, “Transcript of Webcast Presentation: Half-Year Results 2026,” July 21, 2026.
4. The Walt Disney Company, “The Walt Disney Company Board of Directors Appoints Robert A. Iger as Chief Executive Officer,” November 20, 2022.
5. The Walt Disney Company, “Disney Board of Directors Extends Robert A. Iger’s Contract as CEO Through 2026,” July 12, 2023.
6. The Walt Disney Company, “Josh D’Amaro Named Next Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company,” February 3, 2026.
7. Starbucks Corporation / Thomas A. Mackall, “Independent Assessment of Starbucks’ Adherence to Its Global Human Rights Statement,” December 2023.
8. Starbucks Corporation, “Starbucks Names Brian Niccol as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,” August 13, 2024.
9. Starbucks Corporation, “Recap: Starbucks 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders,” March 25, 2026.

Academic and Governance Research

10. Christopher Bingham, Bradley Hendricks, Travis Howell and Kalin Kolev, “Boomerang CEOs: What Happens When the CEO Comes Back?” MIT Sloan Management Review, September 17, 2020.
11. Donald C. Hambrick and Phyllis A. Mason, “Upper Echelons: The Organization as a Reflection of Its Top Managers,” Academy of Management Review, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1984, pp. 193–206.
12. Qi Zhu, Songcui Hu and Wei Shen, “Why Do Some Insider CEOs Make More Strategic Changes Than Others? The Impact of Prior Board Experience on New CEO Insiderness,” Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 41, 2020, pp. 1933–1951.
13. Stanford Graduate School of Business, “CEO Succession Planning,” Quick Guide on Corporate Governance, accessed October 20, 2026.

Authoritative Reporting

14. Reuters, “Chocolate Maker Lindt Ousts CEO After Poor European Results, Two Outlook Cuts,” October 19, 2026.
15. Financial Times, “US Companies Opt for Boomerang CEOs as Succession Plans Falter,” 2025.

Source and Methodology Note

This article was researched through October 20, 2026, 04:00 UTC. It prioritizes company announcements, investor materials and peer-reviewed or university-hosted research, supplemented by Reuters and the Financial Times for market reaction and comparative reporting. Financial figures use the periods and definitions supplied by the cited organizations.

The Lindt appointment is an established fact; its effectiveness is not yet knowable. Statements about its likely advantages and risks are analytical judgments based on the structure of the appointment, current operating evidence and comparative research. Disney and Starbucks are used as governance cases, not as controlled experiments. Their outcomes reflect industry conditions, boards, teams and markets as well as individual CEOs.

The 10.1-percentage-point performance finding in the boomerang-CEO study is an average association derived from a matched observational sample. It should not be read as a forecast for Lindt or as proof that returning CEOs cause underperformance. Selection effects are material because boards often recall former leaders when companies are already under stress.

Suggested Internal Links

• The CEO Handoff Is the Leadership Test: Why Succession Must Begin Before the Search
• The Games Outlast the CEO
• Two CEOs, One Center of Gravity: The Architecture of Shared Leadership
• A Strategy Can Expire Before the Company Does

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