(Bloomberg) -- The death of Tootsie Roll Industries Inc.’s95-year-old chief executive officer is casting a spotlight on thegraying ranks of American CEOs and board members over the pastdecade.

The average age of a CEO in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Indexincreased to 56.9 last year from 55.3 in 2004, according to SpencerStuart, an executive-recruiting company. Typical CEOs have spent18.3 years with their companies, compared with 14.8 a decade ago,Spencer Stuart found.

Tootsie Roll’s Melvin Gordon, who died Tuesday after a briefillness, was one of a handful of 80-plus CEOs running publicly heldcompanies. Bruton Smith, the head of Sonic Automotive Inc., is 87.Harold Riley, who manages the insurance- holding company CitizensInc., is 86. And then there’s corporate America’s most famousoctogenarian: Warren Buffett.

“There’s this great generation of managers that are hanging onto their jobs because this is what they do,” said David Larcker, aprofessor at Stanford University who studies governance issues.“It’s their legacy.”

Board members, who decide whether to keep the CEO in the joblonger, are aging right along with their charges, according toSpencer Stuart. The average age of a director rose to 63.1 lastyear from 60.5 in 2004.

In addition to having the oldest CEO, Tootsie Roll had a boardwith an average age of 78. That made it the third-most-elderly setof directors in the Russell 2000 Index. The youngest member is atleast 67, past traditional retirement age. The two companies thatranked higher: Anworth Mortgage Asset Corp., with an average of80.5 years, and GP Strategies Corp., at almost 79.

Many of the oldest CEOs are founders of companies, so it’s lesssurprising to see them keep hold of the reins well into their 80s,Larcker said. Other executives pass on the CEO job but remainchairmen. Sumner Redstone, 91, is chairman of CBS Corp. and ViacomInc. and controls both businesses through his family holdingcompany, National Amusements Inc. For years, Redstone has insistedhe’ll never die.

Here are some of the oldest CEOs of publicly held companies inthe U.S., according to data compiled by Bloomberg and EquilarInc.:

1) BRUTON SMITH: The87-year-old is chairman and CEO of SonicAutomotive. He’s also CEO and controlling shareholder of SpeedwayMotorsports Inc., which owns and operates eight Nascar racetracks,including the Atlanta Motor Speedway, Charlotte Motor Speedway andLas Vegas Motor Speedway.

2) HAROLD RILEY: The86-year-old is founder and CEO of Citizens, aninsurance-holding company with a market value of about $350million. Riley started Citizens through a predecessor business with$2.5 million of his personal funds and built it up to more than $1billion in assets, according to the company. He has beenresponsible for the acquisition of more than 30 life-insurancefirms.

3) WARRENBUFFETT: At 84, the billionaireis the CEO and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. -- as well asbeing the second-richest American, after Bill Gates. His companyoversees a diverse collection of businesses, including Geico,Clayton Homes and BNSF Railway Co.

4) RUPERT MURDOCH: The83-year-old billionaire serves as CEO of 21stCentury Fox Inc. and chairman of News Corp. The two companies werea single media empire before the Australian-born Murdoch bowed toinvestor pressure to split News Corp.’s newspaper businesses fromthe film and TV-oriented Fox in 2013.

5) ELLEN GORDON: The newly minted Tootsie RollCEO, who inherited the job from her late husband this week, was82 as of last February. She and Melvin Gordonowned a controlling stake in Tootsie Roll, which has a market valueof more than $2 billion.

6) B. FRANCIS SAUL II: The executive, who was81 as of a company filing last year, runs B.F.Saul, the company founded by his father B. Francis Saul in 1892. Ithas a publicly traded real estate investment trust, Saul Centers,and includes the Hay-Adams hotel in Washington among itsproperties. Saul was also the founder of Chevy Chase Bank, whichwas acquired by Capital One in 2009.

7) SHELDON ADELSON: The81-year-old runs Las Vegas Sands Corp., theworld’s largest casino company. Adelson achieved that status bybeing the first Westerner to open in Macau, the only part of Chinawhere gambling is legal, and investing more than $10 billion in themarket.

8) BOB WILMERS: The80-year-old has been chairman and CEO of M&TBank Corp. in Buffalo, New York, since 1983, when the bank hadassets of $2 billion. By last year, M&T’s assets totaled morethan $88.5 billion. He was also a director at the Federal ReserveBank in New York from 1993 to 1998.

--With assistance from Rob Golum in Los Angeles.

Photos provided by AP.

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