In a cross-country analysis, we document stark differences in the retirement hazard at the Statutory Retirement Age (SRA) for Dutch workers (65%) and Australian workers (5%). To understand the role of firms and executives in explaining this disparity, we use comprehensive administrative data for both countries to construct monthly worker-firm-executive datasets and examine job separation rates at the SRA. Focusing on firms/executives employing multiple older workers, we perform a variance decomposition and estimate a series of regressions to quantify firm and executive effects. Consistently, the results show that firms and executives matter in both countries, though to a much greater extent in the Netherlands. Our estimates imply that moving a worker from a bottom quartile firm to a top quartile firm, in terms of SRA separation propensities, would raise the worker’s separation probability at the SRA by 28 percentage points in the Netherlands, while the comparative figure in Australia is just 5 percentage points. We discuss possible institutional reasons for the differences across countries, including the system of automatic job termination at the SRA in the Netherlands and the more targeted public pension in Australia.