@*!# me, the crisis has me cussing

CEOs swear more often in times of financial crisis, and the use of profanities peaked after the start of the recession, new research has revealed.

Analysis of thousands of investor conference calls by Bloomberg showed that “f***”, “s***” and “a******” were used 254 times by company bosses over the past decade.

Swearwords were used nearly 60 times in 2010 as the global recession began to bite, but the use of profanity declined during the past four years as the recovery built up steam. Last year, only 30 expletives were used by top executives in conferences.

The research showed that swearing by top executives was also closely tied to unemployment and GDP figures.

One of the most frequent users of profanities in the period was James Hagedorn, CEO of American multinational Scotts MiracleGro Co, who uttered 20 expletives.

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary — who is renowned for being outspoken — also features in the list with 17 expletives.

David Farr, CEO of Emerson Electric Co, swore 10 times.

Farr was one of the few CEOs who often apologised for swearing. Of the seven calls where he used expletives, he said sorry four times. In comparison, of the total 254 swearing instances recorded during the decade, there were only 22 apologies.

The record for most uses of one swearword goes to Brad Buss, chief financial officer of Cypress Semiconductor Corp, who said “s***” 28 times.

The only woman recorded to say “f***” was Carol Bartz, then CEO of Yahoo, who said in 2009 that nobody was “f****** doing anything” to fix problems at the company.