Kenya’s record inflation and dismally weak shilling performance of late last year has been successfully dealt with by the Central Bank of Kenya’s intervention, the very same institution whose governor came under the spotlight to resign when things in the economy were not so good. Whether he is truly to blame or not, Prof. Njuguna Ndungu, who occupies the top seat at the CBK, came under a lot of pressure earlier this year amongst Parliamentarians to resign purportedly because he was the person to blame for letting the economy dwindle as much as it did.

While the CBK governor did not resign, the global business world is littered with cases where CEOs of some of the biggest businesses in the world have been forced to step down from their top positions when something negative happened in the companies they head. The following are three more recent examples that demonstrate this unforgiving phenomenon where when something goes wrong, the buck must stop with the CEO:

Barclays PLC – Bob Diamond

The latest in a string of scandals that are now a common feature in the global financial environment has made ‘Libor’ a near household name and more than that, forced the resignation of one of the world’s highest paid CEOs.  Barely one week after the news broke, that Barclays Bank had manipulated the Libor and Euribor interest rates to appear to be doing well during the global financial crisis while many other companies were fledgling; the bank’s CEO Bob Diamond was forced to resign in the midst of mounting political pressure. Read more on this here.

British Petroleum – Tony Hayward

In April of 2010, an explosion on the licensed Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig set in motion a chain of events that led to the largest maritime oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry on the Gulf of Mexico. Despite the announcement by BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward that the petroleum giant would take full responsibility for the spill, there were calls for his resignation in the wake of the disaster with president Obama even quoted saying that he would have sacked Tony Hayward if he was working for him. Four months after the disaster was set in motion, it was announced that Tony Hayward would quit as BP’s chief executive after pressure on how he  handled the crisis. Read more on this here.

NPR – Vivian Schiller

Vivian Schiller who was the CEO of NPR, an American media organization resigned in March this year after a controversy broke where an executive in her company was caught on tape making negative comments about US conservatives and the political Tea Party Movement. Read more on this story here.