EVE New Citizens Q&A

Directors and people with any shares can initiate a CEO replacement vote. In theory you should be able to do so with even one share. This is why giving shares away to anybody is a bad idea, as anyone with shares can potentially take over the corp. (However I've not explicitly tested this in ages, so don't blame me if this was changed in the last few years).

Skipping the second question for a moment: only shareholders that voted count. So if you have one share and vote to replace the CEO, and someone else has 1000 shares but they don't vote at all, the vote passes and you become the CEO.

If you can't get access to any shares, you could try petitioning. CCP may or may not help you. But they will not even consider it unless it's reasonably provable that the CEO is actually gone - i.e. if their subscription has been cancelled for many months. (*) Unless the corporation has some assets that are inaccessible to you in any other way, it's faster and easier to just create a new corp.

Why would CCP set this up that way? Anyone who can replace a CEO gone inactive can also take over the corp when the CEO goes on holiday for a week. Shares are the mechanism that gives you the power to do either. You trade corp security against hostile takeover for security against the CEO getting hit by a truck. There is no way to have both. (**)




(*) Personal note: One person who holds shares of my corp has left the game a long time ago. We tried to get the shares back (just to clear up the shareholder list). Even two years after he unsubscribed CCP was not willing to do anything to his shares. I know this is not the same situation, but I'm just setting an example that getting CCP to do anything to inactive accounts is difficult.

(**) Actually, with intelligent distribution of shares and some weak assumptions about trusted people you can "almost" have both. But then there is a glitch/feature in the game bordering an exploit (but to my knowledge never declared as such) which will ruin one for you again.

Beyond the question of shareholders and leadership transfer.....
You should leave that corp. There are myriad old and highly organized and effective corps and alliances in Eve. Join those. If things hinge on a single guy, then organizationally the corp sucks, and it's potential is cut off at the knees. Talk to your corp-mates, and convince the to leave, and join en-masse in a larger, older, more bureaucratically cohesive corp.

As an added bonus, the older groups tend to have organizational infrastructure in place that supplies a number sweet boons to members. Guides, buy/sell programs, skilling programs, PI co-ops, ship-replacement, election systems, accountability, clearly defined roles so you know who to talk to, diplomatic stability(or at least intentional instability), stress-tested system and plans, etc.

This is why I'm comfortable looking down my nose at new corps. Time, effort, and tears are utterly required to set up and settle these things in a functional manner. New groups do not have the time with which to have generated all that effort and drama-under-the-bridge that comes with all this.