Except that it does nothing other than soothe the court of public opinion. It does nothing. These chief executives likely had no idea and left it to their employees to do their jobs.
But I wouldn't mind one of those severance packages.
Hah, everything is about public opinion. It doesn't matter who you are, or what your personal beliefs are, if the public opinion of your company sucks and you're in charge, that's it. Just look at the news, you see mayors being asked to resign for some patrol officer violation, or heads of state universities being asked to quit because of some professor's tweet. People don't care, they want to punish the person in charge, at the top. Got a beef with Walmart about some double-charge on your credit card? Forget blaming the moron that swiped your card twice, punish the store owner, have them quit.
That said, if the executive DIDN'T know about the breach then he/she is either completely incompetent or has no visibility into what his/her subordinates are doing. Neither of which is an excuse. The CEO at my company is responsible for 2000+ employees and I'm on a first name basis with him, but he also knows his entire staff and the numbers better than the analysts do sometimes. Because he's involved, he gets it.
You can't live in an ivory tower and collect your 4M per year and expect people to just "take care of you". You need to ask questions, read articles, get input, or live with the consequences.
Equifax had to know it was a target. It had to know that other places were being breached. Why wasn't the CEO asking the CIO or technical officer questions like, when was our last penetration test, who signed off on us being compliant, when did it happen, who's on the hook if we get breached, etc... Where is it in writing that that person did any of that? Because I'll tell you what, if there is documentation I'd be keeping my job..can't say much about the CIO though.