What the Analysts, Experts, and Insiders Say

The Buchanan firing got a lot of attention. Business journalists covered it within hours. Retail analysts weighed in the same day. A Bloomberg Opinion column ran within the week. And then there was a board member who said what nobody at Kohl's wanted to hear.

I want to walk through five different takes on this scandal. They come from different angles and different mediums, but they all point in the same direction.

Neil Saunders, Managing Director of GlobalData Retail

"A "blow upon a bruise" for a company already in a perpetural chaos."

- Neil Saunders 

Saunders is one of the most frequently quoted retail analysts in the country, and his reaction was immediate. He called the firing a "blow upon a bruise" for Kohl's and questioned the board's due diligence in hiring Buchanan in the first place (as cited in Meyersohn, 2025). He also noted that the situation gives the impression of a company in permanent chaos, even though the termination itself had nothing to do with business performance.

What I think: Saunders is right that this compounds an already existing trust problem. Kohl's had been dealing with declining sales, store closures, and leadership turnover for years. Adding a CEO ethics scandal on top of that doesn't just create a news cycle. It makes investors, employees, and customers wonder whether anyone at the top has things under control. The reputational damage is cumulative, and Saunders captures that well.

Mark Cohen, Former Director of Retail Studies at Columbia Business School

"Firing a CEO this early is "about as extreme a measure as you can imagine""

- Mark Cohen 

Cohen, a veteran retail executive, called firing a CEO this early into a tenure "about as extreme a measure as you can imagine" (as cited in Howland, 2025). But his most important contribution was a question nobody else was asking: did Buchanan do the same thing at Michaels or Walmart? He held senior positions at both companies while reportedly hiding the same relationship.

What I think: This is the observation that stuck with me. If Buchanan was able to operate this way across three employers without anyone catching it, the problem isn't just one company's oversight. It's a gap in how the retail industry vets executives when they move between companies. References and background checks clearly didn't surface a relationship that Bloomberg later described as something of an "open secret" among former colleagues (Bloomberg, 2025). Cohen's question deserves an answer, and so far nobody has given one.

Beth Kowitt, Bloomberg Opinion Columnist

Kowitt took a different angle. In a column published a few days after the firing, she raised the broader question of how much boards should know about their executives' personal lives and where the line falls between privacy and fiduciary duty (Kowitt, 2025). It's an interesting tension. Buchanan's relationship with Holt wasn't inherently wrong. What was wrong was using his position to steer company resources toward her without disclosing the conflict.

What I think: This is a useful counterpoint because it forces you to separate the personal from the professional. The issue was never the relationship itself. It was the financial decisions Buchanan made because of it and the fact that he hid it from every employer that asked. Kowitt's framing helps clarify that this isn't about policing executives' private lives. It's about enforcing the disclosure requirements that exist for exactly this kind of situation.

Christine Day, Former Kohl’s Board Member

"The board lacks transparency and real discussion. Decisions are made behind closed doors."

- Christine Day  

I covered Day's resignation in detail in Post 3, but she belongs in this post too because her voice is the one that carries the most weight. She was inside the boardroom. She served on the audit and compensation committees. She's a former CEO of Lululemon. And she didn't just resign quietly. She wrote a series of emails that ended up in an amended SEC filing, criticizing the board's lack of transparency, its top-down decision-making, and its failure to rigorously examine accountability when things go wrong (SEC Form 8-K/A, May 9, 2025).

What I think: Day's perspective matters more than any outside analyst because she had a front-row seat. Her critique goes beyond Buchanan as an individual and identifies a cultural problem in how the board operates. When she writes that "real discussions rarely occur" and that "some people know more than others, making board members feel alienated," she's describing the exact kind of environment where a conflict of interest can survive undetected. Kohl's dismissal of her concerns feels like a missed opportunity.

ImpACT International (Policy Analysis)

"A "textbook case of ethical failure" at the highest level. CEOs must act as ethical stewards."

- ImpACT Intl. 

ImpACT International published a detailed case analysis calling the Buchanan firing a "textbook case of ethical failure at the highest level" (ImpACT International, 2025). They framed CEOs as ethical stewards who set the standard for the entire organization and argued that Buchanan's actions represent a clear abuse of that role. They also connected the case to a broader pattern of executive misconduct across industries, from banking (Danske Bank) to pharma (Purdue Pharma), arguing that this isn't an isolated incident.

What I think: The cross-industry comparison is what makes this analysis useful. It's easy to look at the Kohl's scandal as a retail story. But when you place it alongside compliance failures in banking, pharma, and defense, a pattern emerges: executives who treat ethics policies as suggestions rather than obligations, and boards that don't catch it until the damage is done. ImpACT's framing pushes the conversation beyond one company and toward a systemic question about how corporate leadership is held accountable.

The common thread running through all five of these voices is that this scandal isn't just about one bad actor. It's about the systems around him. The vetting that didn't catch it. The board culture that Christine Day says prevented real oversight. The industry norms that let an executive carry the same undisclosed conflict from company to company for nearly a decade. Every commentator frames it slightly differently, but they all land on the same conclusion: treating this as a one-time event would be a mistake.

In Post 5, I'll apply three ethical frameworks from our course to this case and explain which one I think gives us the best path forward.

references:

1. Bloomberg. (2025, May 3). Fired Kohl's CEO said to have had history of mixing relationship with work. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-03/fired-kohl-s-ceo-said-to-have-had-history-of-mixing-relationship-with-work
2. Howland, D. (2025, May 1). Kohl's fires CEO Ashley Buchanan over conflicts of interest. Retail Dive. https://www.retaildive.com/news/kohls-ceo-ashley-buchanan-fired-conflicts-of-interest-vendor-transactions/746843/
3. ImpACT International. (2025). Kohl's CEO scandal: Ashley Buchanan's ethical lapses. https://impactpolicies.org/news/479/kohls-ceo-scandal-ashley-buchanans-ethical-lapses
4. Kowitt, B. (2025, May 6). Kohl's CEO fired: Can CEOs really have private lives? Bloomberg Opinion. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-06/kohl-s-ceo-fired-can-ceos-really-have-a-private-life
5. Meyersohn, N. (2025, May 2). Kohl's just fired its brand new CEO for unethical behavior. CNN Business. https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/business/kohls-ceo-change
6. SEC Form 8-K/A. (2025, May 9). Kohl's Corporation. Exhibit 99.5: Christine Day resignation statement draft. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000885639/000119312525116699/d917496dex995.htm