(Bloomberg) -- The death of Tootsie Roll Industries Inc.’s 95-year-old chief executive officer is casting a spotlight on the graying ranks of American CEOs and board members over the past decade.

The average age of a CEO in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index increased to 56.9 last year from 55.3 in 2004, according to Spencer Stuart, an executive-recruiting company. Typical CEOs have spent 18.3 years with their companies, compared with 14.8 a decade ago, Spencer Stuart found.

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

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

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

In addition to having the oldest CEO, Tootsie Roll had a board with an average age of 78. That made it the third-most-elderly set of directors in the Russell 2000 Index. The youngest member is at least 67, past traditional retirement age. The two companies that ranked higher: Anworth Mortgage Asset Corp., with an average of 80.5 years, and GP Strategies Corp., at almost 79.

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

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

1) BRUTON SMITH: The 87-year-old is chairman and CEO of Sonic Automotive. He’s also CEO and controlling shareholder of Speedway Motorsports Inc., which owns and operates eight Nascar racetracks, including the Atlanta Motor Speedway, Charlotte Motor Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

2) HAROLD RILEY: The 86-year-old is founder and CEO of Citizens, an insurance-holding company with a market value of about $350 million. Riley started Citizens through a predecessor business with $2.5 million of his personal funds and built it up to more than $1 billion in assets, according to the company. He has been responsible for the acquisition of more than 30 life-insurance firms.

3) WARREN BUFFETT: At 84, the billionaire is the CEO and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. -- as well as being the second-richest American, after Bill Gates. His company oversees a diverse collection of businesses, including Geico, Clayton Homes and BNSF Railway Co.

4) RUPERT MURDOCH: The 83-year-old billionaire serves as CEO of 21st Century Fox Inc. and chairman of News Corp. The two companies were a single media empire before the Australian-born Murdoch bowed to investor pressure to split News Corp.’s newspaper businesses from the film and TV-oriented Fox in 2013.

5) ELLEN GORDON: The newly minted Tootsie Roll CEO, who inherited the job from her late husband this week, was 82 as of last February. She and Melvin Gordon owned a controlling stake in Tootsie Roll, which has a market value of more than $2 billion.

6) B. FRANCIS SAUL II: The executive, who was 81 as of a company filing last year, runs B.F. Saul, the company founded by his father B. Francis Saul in 1892. It has a publicly traded real estate investment trust, Saul Centers, and includes the Hay-Adams hotel in Washington among its properties. Saul was also the founder of Chevy Chase Bank, which was acquired by Capital One in 2009.

7) SHELDON ADELSON: The 81-year-old runs Las Vegas Sands Corp., the world’s largest casino company. Adelson achieved that status by being the first Westerner to open in Macau, the only part of China where gambling is legal, and investing more than $10 billion in the market.

8) BOB WILMERS: The 80-year-old has been chairman and CEO of M&T Bank Corp. in Buffalo, New York, since 1983, when the bank had assets of $2 billion. By last year, M&T’s assets totaled more than $88.5 billion. He was also a director at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York from 1993 to 1998.

--With assistance from Rob Golum in Los Angeles.

Photos provided by AP.

Special Reports /

Death of Tootsie Roll CEO puts Buffett, Riley closer to top of oldest U.S. CEOs

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