This assumes that they aren’t hiring the CEO to be the fall guy. Someone who’s job is largely (as things stand now) meant to take on the risk that if the company does not increase profits or make shareholders happy, they will blame and fire that person and hire someone else.

Since a lot of CEOs kind of bet on this they take ridiculous chances (like getting paid in stock options that only mature at a certain point with the knowledge that they need to make stock options valuable so they can cash out).

Valuable doesn’t have to be long term. It just has to last long enough for the person in question to cash out.