SEC 8-K Executive Changes Monitor — CEO/CFO Alerts

8-K Executive Changes Monitor — Real-Time CEO/CFO/CTO Alerts

Get a Slack, email, or webhook notification the moment a public-company executive resigns, retires, or is appointed. Built directly on the official SEC EDGAR 8-K feed — no scraping, no anti-bot, no auth needed. Granular filtering by ticker watchlist, role keyword, sub-item (5.02a/b/c/d/e/f), industry SIC code, and narrative regex.

A modern, programmable alternative to Boardex, BoardroomAlpha, Spencer Stuart Insights, Citeline, and CXO Movements — for executive recruiters, PE/VC portfolio teams, sales-intelligence ops, equity analysts, and journalists who need to know about C-suite moves the same hour they're filed.

TL;DR: Every public-company executive departure, appointment, or compensation change is filed under SEC 8-K Item 5.02 within 4 business days. This actor watches that feed in real time, filters by your criteria, and pushes alerts. Pay only $0.30 per matched filing delivered.

What does 8-K Executive Monitor do?

This actor polls the official SEC EDGAR 8-K real-time feed and surfaces filings with Item 5.02 (Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Officers; Compensatory Arrangements). It's the regulatory item every US-listed company must file when a senior officer or director leaves, joins, or has their compensation adjusted.

The actor:

1. Pre-filters the EDGAR 8-K RSS feed to entries citing Item 5.02 (massive efficiency win — only ~5–15% of 8-Ks have 5.02)
2. Optionally filters by your ticker watchlist before fetching anything
3. Fetches each filing's primary HTML, strips it to plain text
4. Detects exact sub-items cited: 5.02(a) director resignation, 5.02(b) departure, 5.02(c) officer appointment, 5.02(d) director election, 5.02(e) compensation arrangement, 5.02(f) salary determination
5. Runs role-keyword + departure-keyword + appointment-keyword regex against the body
6. Generates an excerpt around the matched anchor text
7. Pushes alerts to your channel of choice and to the dataset

Why this beats free alternatives

• SEC EDGAR website lets you search 8-Ks but doesn't push alerts, support watchlists, or filter by item subsection.
• DIY n8n / Zapier flows break when the EDGAR RSS structure changes and don't extract sub-items reliably.
• Bloomberg Terminal has executive-change alerts but costs $24K/seat/year.

Why this beats expensive alternatives

• Boardex ≈ $20K+/yr enterprise. BoardroomAlpha ≈ $XK/yr. Spencer Stuart ≈ retainer-only.
• This actor: ~$10–$100/month for typical use.

Why use 8-K Executive Monitor?

Buyer personas + use cases

🎯 Executive recruiter / search firm

A CEO leaves their public company — that's a retainer signal worth $50K–$500K. Be first to call. Filter by roleKeywords: ["CEO", "CFO"] + departureKeywords: ["resign", "retire"] and watch the entire S&P 1500.

🏢 PE / VC portfolio operations

Watch a basket of portfolio company tickers. When a portfolio CEO leaves, the firm's MD needs to know within hours, not when it makes the WSJ. Filter tickers: ["PORTFOLIO_TICKERS"].

💼 B2B sales-intelligence team

"Competitor's VP of Engineering just left → pitch their replacement now." Filter by roleKeywords for the role in your buyer profile + watch competitor tickers.

📊 Equity analyst / hedge fund

CEO/CFO turnover is a documented stock-mover. Catching the 8-K in the first 5 minutes of filing = real alpha. Filter for material roles + S&P 500 tickers.

📰 Financial journalist / newsletter

Beat the news cycle. Watch the Russell 1000 with default keyword filters, get a Slack ping when something material drops.

🏦 Activist investor / proxy team

Detect early signs of board change at a target — Item 5.02(a) is "involuntary departure" language and reveals proxy-fight setup.

How to use 8-K Executive Monitor

⚠️ Important: this actor must be scheduled to receive ongoing alerts. A single run only checks once. Use Apify's built-in Schedules feature — no Zapier, n8n, or external scheduler needed.

1. Click "Try for free" to add the actor to your Apify account.
2. Configure the input:
   • Pick which itemFilter sub-items you care about (default = a, b, c, d — i.e. all departures + appointments)
   • Optionally set a tickers watchlist (most useful for PE/VC portfolio monitoring)
   • Tune roleKeywords to match seniority you care about (default catches CEO/CFO/CTO/COO/Chairman/General Counsel)
3. Pick a notification channel: Slack, Email digest, or Custom webhook.
4. First run: enable testMode to fire one alert for the most recent matching filing.
5. Set up the Schedule: Actor → Schedules → New schedule → cron 0 */2 * * * (every 2 hours) is the recommended default.

Schedule cadence cheat sheet

Cron	Frequency	Best for
*/30 * * * *	every 30 min	Active M&A / earnings season tracking
0 */2 * * *	every 2 hours	Standard recruiter / PE monitoring (default)
0 9 * * 1-5	weekdays 9am UTC	Daily morning digest only

Input fields

Field	Description
itemFilter	Which 5.02 sub-items to alert on. Default = (a) director resignation + (b) departure + (c) appointment + (d) election.
tickers	Stock tickers watchlist. Empty = match all US public companies.
sicCodes	4-digit SIC codes to limit by industry (e.g. ["7370"] for Computer Services).
roleKeywords	Substring match in 8-K body. Default catches CEO/CFO/CTO/COO/Chairman/Chief/Director/General Counsel.
personNames	Track specific executives by name across companies.
departureKeywords	Words signaling departure (resign, retire, step down, depart, terminate, no longer).
appointmentKeywords	Words signaling appointment (appoint, hire, join, named, elect, promote, succeed).
requireMatchingNarrative	If true, body must contain a role keyword AND a departure-or-appointment keyword. Default true (filters routine annual board re-elections etc.).
excludeAmendments	Skip 8-K/A re-filings. Default true.
lookbackHours	Recent-filings window. Default 24h.
notificationChannel	none / slack / email / webhook
slackWebhookUrl / emailRecipient / customWebhookUrl	Channel credentials
userAgent	Required. SEC fair-access policy: Your Name your@email.com.
testMode	First-run sanity check.

Output

Every match is also pushed to the run's dataset. Example item:

{
  "accessionNumber": "000119312526210895",
  "filedAt": "2026-05-07T11:04:15-04:00",
  "isAmendment": false,
  "formType": "8-K",
  "cik": "0001066247",
  "company": "REGENCY CENTERS LP",
  "ticker": "REG",
  "itemsCited": ["5.02(b)", "5.02(c)"],
  "eventType": "Transition",
  "matchedRoles": ["ceo", "chief"],
  "matchedNames": [],
  "matchedDepartureKeywords": ["retire", "step down"],
  "matchedAppointmentKeywords": ["appoint", "succeed"],
  "narrativeExcerpt": "…the Board of Directors of Regency Centers Corporation announced that Lisa Palmer will retire as Chief Executive Officer effective…",
  "filingUrl": "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1066247/000119312526210895/0001193125-26-210895-index.htm"
}

Download the dataset in JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML from the Apify Console.

Pricing — pay-per-event

This actor uses Apify pay-per-event pricing: ~$0.30 per matched filing delivered. Quiet days cost $0. Compare to:

Service	Approx cost
Bloomberg Terminal	$24,000 / seat / year
Boardex	$20,000+ / year
BoardroomAlpha	$XK+ / year
Spencer Stuart Insights	retainer-only
8-K Executive Monitor	~$5–$100 / month for typical use

A recruiter watching the S&P 1500 with default keyword filters typically sees 30–80 matches/month = $9–$24/month. A PE firm watching 50 portfolio tickers might see 5–15 matches/month = $1.50–$4.50/month.

FAQ

Is this legal? Yes. SEC EDGAR is the official public filing system. All 8-K data is public-domain.

How fresh is the data? EDGAR's RSS updates every few minutes. Latency from filing acceptance to your alert is your scheduled-run interval (~2 hours by default) plus ~30 seconds for parsing.

Why do some matches have empty matchedRoles? The 8-K mentions an Item 5.02 event but doesn't explicitly use a role keyword in the body (rare — usually means the role is named in an exhibit). Set requireMatchingNarrative: false to surface these too.

What about non-US companies? This actor is US SEC EDGAR only. UK FCA, EU MAR, Canadian SEDI executive disclosures would each need separate actors.

Why doesn't every 8-K with Item 5.02 mention a role keyword? Some filings only refer to executives by name in the narrative. Add likely names to personNames to catch those.

Does this support 6-K (foreign-private-issuer) filings? Not yet. 6-K reporting on executive changes is less standardized; could be added in v0.2.

Support

Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab. Feature requests welcome.

---

Disclaimer: This actor is an information-retrieval tool for publicly available SEC filings. Nothing in its output constitutes investment advice or investment recommendations.

Keywords: 8-K filings tracker, 8-K alerts, SEC 8-K monitor, Item 5.02, executive departure tracker, CEO departure alerts, CFO change alerts, executive moves tracker, real-time 8-K, EDGAR 8-K, executive recruiter intelligence, Boardex alternative, BoardroomAlpha alternative, Spencer Stuart alternative, CXO movements, executive search software, board change tracker, c-suite tracker, public company executive monitoring.