Two beleaguered heads of large organisations have finally bitten the dust, with NHS chief Sir David Nicholson announcing his retirement from March next year, and Nick Buckles quitting the security outsourcing giant G4S. Both had been targets for intense criticism since mid-2012, and both have arguably lasted far longer than most people expected. Also common to their departures are immense pension pots. Nicholson stands to receive £1.9 million, while Buckles will leave with a financial package worth an astonishing £16m.

Their respective failures have been well documented. Nicholson presided over the scandal at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust and while some media outlets – including this very site – have argued that Nicholson himself was not automatically to blame for those terrible events, much of the public has harboured an understandable desire for the man at the top to fall on his sword. David Cameron had led the charge to back him, almost certainly out of a desire for an experienced operator to oversee the huge NHS reforms, and Jeremy Hunt echoed that support this week, adding that a retirement – as opposed to immediate resignation – allowed him “an orderly period in which to select his successor”.

Buckles, memorably, became a figure of notoriety following the Olympics security shambles last summer, when the army was drafted in following the firm’s failure to deliver its promised manpower. After an inquest that ascribed much of the blame to the company in general and Buckles’ leadership in particular, their reputations are in tatters. As viewers of Have I Got News For You will attest, G4S has effectively become shorthand for bungling. It has emerged that Buckles was allowed to stay on until now thanks to his 28-year service record, but a recent profit warning has proved to be the final straw.

Both men appear to have survived for far longer than they should have, and probably for similar reasons:

1. They were both experienced in their sectors, so did not become completely useless to their respective organisations overnight.

2. It takes time to find a successor, and both the NHS and G4S have bought time to identify the right replacements.

3. Board chiefs who appointed them in the first place may have been loath to admit their mistakes, preferring to ride out the storm and quietly move them on later.

4. It costs money to remove leaders who have failed, so allowing them to see out their terms to some extent saves an organisation money.

However, those four mitigating factors come at a cost: G4S’ reputation is now at an all-time low – something that would have played a part in the recent profit warnings – and both Cameron and Hunt have been publicly vilified for their post-Staffordshire support of Nicholson, which could cost them votes at the next election, a problem they can ill afford.

Both organisations may find that the benefits they accrued from holding on to damaged goods will outweigh any benefits they may have accrued.