Even if it were about consent (and it's not), it's difficult to show that a relationship with such a power imbalance is consensual. If it were consensual it should have been disclosed. And as a CEO he has a greater responsibility to follow these kinds of rules. He knows it, and he did it anyway, and then he got caught doing it. There's really no other action to take besides removing him.

Maybe it's a generational thing? The younger generations seem to have some sort of anxiety with respect to consent and power dynamics, where even something as trivial as a modest age difference is viewed with suspicion. The movie Obsession can be seen as that anxiety translated into the horror genre.

To be fair though, a CEO having an affair with a subordinate should be seen with at least some suspicion...

IDK, if you look at the messaging around Clancy where women are completely subordinate to hormones to the point it excuses chasing down three children and systematically murdering them, or the Cornell 7 case where a woman can willfully engage in sex with multiple men and then only decide it was rape retroactively after explicitly negotiating with the men what was ok during and after with text messages where she defended her own actions but then when rumors started she decided she didn’t actually give consent…

The people saying you can’t trust women… are mostly coming from women.

Wild time if you are dating! Yes could mean No if later she decides she didn’t like something about it.