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The Best CEOs Of The Past 20 Years
Ted Turner once said that if he only had some humility, he'd be perfect.
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It's true that you need a big ego to carry a multinational corporation. But you also need creativity, hard work, leadership and a dozen of other traits to rise above the competition.
So how do you define greatness? We ranked a bunch of recent American CEOs, assigning up to 10 points for growth, 10 for corporate legacy and 10 for personal reputation.
For example, take News Corp's Rupert Murdoch. Incredible growth over three decades: 8 points. A corporate legacy that changed an industry: 8 points. A polarizing figure not known for his management style: 5 points.
Disagree with anything on the list? Let us know in the comments.
Tenure: 2006 - Present
Company growth: 3
Corporate legacy: 4
Personal reputation: 8
When Nooyi assumed the CEO post, she was the fifth CEO in the company's history, and the first woman. Previously she served as CFO since 2000, during which she is credited with increasing the company's revenue by 72% annually.
Last year, Nooyi completed the $7.8 billion purchase of Pepsi's two largest bottlers in North America. She's also expanding the company internationally, especially with the purchase of Wimm-Bill-Dann, which makes Pepsi the largest food-and-beverage business in Russia.
Nooyi has long pushed for a diversified brand. "The minute you've developed a new business model, it's extinct, because somebody is going to copy it," she told Fortune.
Today, Pepsi's market cap is $111 billion.
Tenure: 2006 - Present
Company growth: 3
Corporate legacy: 5
Personal reputation: 7
It was equally a stroke of good fortune and bad luck when Mulally took charge of Ford in 2006. The company, and the auto industry, was healthy and robust. Two years later, everything changed. Auto industry executives were pleading with lawmakers on Capitol Hill just to keep their companies afloat.
Ford managed to decline government bailout money, while competitors GM and Chrysler struggled. Mulally simplified the company's product development and ultimately laid off over 10% of the salaried workforce.
After Ford lost $29.3 billion between 2006 and 2008, it finally managed to post a $2.7 billion profit in 2009 and is continuing to recover.
"Alan's style is pretty relentless," chief financial officer Lewis Booth told CNN. "He says, 'If this is the reality, what are we going to do about it?'
Tenure: 2005 - Present
Company growth: 3
Corporate legacy: 5
Personal reputation: 8
Iger joined Disney as CEO in 2005, succeeding ousted head Michael Eisner after an internal struggle.
Despite the turbulent transition, Iger managed to regain a large amount strategic control, centralizing much of the decision-making power that was lost to the company’s departments. He also reconciled the strife between former board member and Walt Disney scion Roy Disney and the company’s management.
His biggest move was the acquisition of Pixar in $7.4 billion, which has helped Disney get back to its roots in animation.
Tenure: 1983 - Present
Company growth: 6
Corporate legacy: 6
Personal reputation: 4
A protégé of FedMart and Price Club founder Sol Price, Sinegal co-founded Costco Wholesale Corp. in 1983 and proceeded to take the members-only warehouse store model into brand new territory.
Under Sinegal, Costco became the first warehouse store to offer fresh food, gas stations, pharmacies, eye-care clinics and more.
Costco’s market cap is now $36 billion and leads the warehouse club industry in sales volume.
Tenure: 1983 - 2001 (Gap); 2001 - Present (J. Crew)
Company growth: 4
Corporate legacy: 5
Personal reputation: 8
As Gap's stock price rose exponentially during the 1990s, Drexler earned a nickname: corporate turnaround king. When he did the same thing with J. Crew the next decade, retailers called him a "Merchant Prince." Both titles are appropriate, as he turned the companies into robust, iconic American brands.
He took his first CEO gig at age 36, and after proving himself at Ann Taylor, he joined Gap in 1983. He boldly restructured management and created a new "casual Friday" culture in America. At J. Crew, he sophisticated the clothing, and asks his employees to only market items that they're crazy about.
He took Gap from $480 million in sales to $13.6 billion within two decades, and brought J.Crew up from $700 million to $1.7 billion in revenue within a decade.
Tenure: 1970 - 1996
Company growth: 5
Corporate legacy: 8
Personal reputation: 4
Turner founded TBS in 1970 and became a pioneer of the cable news industry a decade later when he founded CNN, the first 24-hour cable news network.
CNN was revolutionary, helping Turner earn the Time Person of the Year award in 1991. Turner expanded CNN’s reach to several cable and satellite TV companies, websites and closed-circuit radio. The network now has 36 bureaus around the world and upwards of 900 local affiliates.
He merged TBS with Time Warner in 1996, which was later bought by AOL. Turner was the largest shareholder in the company when the stock price plunged, but he never had an operational role during the era.
Tenure: 1998 - 2008
Company growth: 5
Corporate legacy: 6
Personal reputation: 7
Whitman joined eBay as CEO in 1998 and grew the company from 30 employees to 15,000 employees -- and from $4 million to $8 billion in revenue -- in under 10 years. She completely reorganized the management structure of the company upon entry, and made some large acquisitions -- most notably PayPal and Skype -- with mixed results.
She has received numerous accolades due to her success at eBay. Whitman was inducted to the US Business Hall of Fame, named a top 10 performing CEO by Harvard Business Review and proclaimed one of the top five most powerful women by Fortune.
Tenure: 1971 - Present
Company growth: 6
Corporate legacy: 7
Personal reputation: 5
A former US Marine Captain, Smith took his experience as a forward air controller to the express delivery in 1971 when he founded FedEx.
Smith developed the first integrated air-ground shipping system, which took off two years in with 14 jets servicing 25 cities. The model revolutionized the shipping industry and the capability for easy use, overnight delivery eventually became the norm.
Now FedEx is the largest overnight delivery service in the US and has a market cap of $31 billion.
Tenure: 1993 - 2002
Company growth: 1
Corporate legacy: 9
Personal reputation: 9
Gerstner joined IBM as CEO after leaving the helm of RJR Nabisco in 1993, and is widely credited with the company’s monumental turnaround.
His greatest feat was to overcome barriers to change to realign the company’s core business around IT services. Gerstner completely changed the company’s corporate culture, replacing much of the workforce and centralizing decision-making authority. However, IBM only grew 3.2% during his tenure because he was fixing the company.
Gerstner received many awards for his accomplishments at IBM and his contributions to the industry, including a Legend in Leadership Award from Yale and was named a Knight Commander of the British Empire.
He stepped down as CEO in 2002 to join The Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm.
Tenure: 1979 - Present
Company growth: 8
Corporate legacy: 8
Personal reputation: 5
Murdoch, 80, is a newsman at heart. So much so that getting the story has put him in the midst of controversy -- and often into the headlines himself.
He launched his empire beginning with a small newspaper in Adelaide, Australia, and eventually created a larger media business buying and starting other papers before moving into the UK, US and Asian markets.
His love for tabloid journalism led him to buy The New York Post and London's now-closing News of the World, among a host of other tabloids. In 1985, he purchased 20th Century Fox, and the next year, he created Fox Broadcasting Company.
In 2007, Murdoch made headlines with his $5 billion offer to purchase Dow Jones, in a contentious battle to take the WSJ away from the Bancroft family. He won, and succeeded in being a formidable threat to the New York Times.
But he made even bigger headlines this week, when News of The World editors were accused of hacking into a murdered girl's cell phone. After a few days of silence, Murdoch made the dramatic decision to shut down the entire paper.
Tenure: 2001 - 2011
Company growth: 9
Corporate legacy: 5
Personal reputation: 7
Was Schmidt good or just lucky? Larry Page and Sergey Brin were always leading the company with him, but they also knew Schmidt brought in an expertise they didn't have.
Under Schmidt, Google grew from its $27 billion IPO, and launched hundreds of products. He played a key role in developing and maintaining the culture at Google, encouraging deep collaboration between teams and giving plenty of space for creativity.
He surrounded himself with talent that successfully navigated antitrust lawsuits, international threats to censorship, and managed to keep its dominant position in Internet search. The company made nearly 100 acquisitions under Schmidt, including huge deals for YouTube, DoubleClick and AdMob.
When Schmidt handed off the CEO post to Page in April, Google's revenue was $8.58 billion. He's staying on as a chairman, and says one of his biggest regrets is not recognizing the threat Facebook posed earlier: "I screwed up," he says.
Tenure: 1987 - 2000; 2008 - Present
Company growth: 5
Corporate legacy: 9
Personal reputation: 8
Inspired by the European way of life, Schultz brought America into coffeehouses. He also created a culture where people would pay $2 for a cup of brewed coffee. Since founding Il Giornale, which acquired Starbucks a few years later, he grew the company by focusing on the "experiential" aspect of visiting a coffeehouse.
He stepped down from his CEO post in the 2000; though he oversaw global strategy as chairman, he was dissatisfied with the way the company was being run, and sent an urgent message in 2007 to then-CEO Jim Donald, telling him the company was in dire straits because it had expanded too quickly.
In January 2008, he again took the reigns of the company, and led one of the most successful turnarounds in corporate history during a recession. Today, Starbucks has more than $10 billion in annual revenue.
Tenure: 1977 - Present
Company growth: 9
Corporate legacy: 7
Personal reputation: 6
Ellison co-founded enterprise software company Oracle in 1977 and built the company in the face of heavy competitive pressure.
IBM was the database industry leader, but it stuttered in entering the mid-range market, opening the door for Oracle, Informix and Sybase. After a lengthy battle between the three companies, Oracle came out on top after Sybase tailed off and IBM absorbed Informix in 2000.
Since then, Oracle has been at the top of the industry, and Ellison has flexed his financial might with dozens of major – of which many were successful – acquisitions, headlined by Sun Microsystems, BEA Systems, Hyperion, Siebel Systems and PeopleSoft.
Tenure: 2004 - Present
Company growth: 8
Corporate legacy: 10
Personal reputation: 5
It only took four years from when Zuckerberg devised the social network in his Harvard dorm room in 2004 to become the world's youngest billionaire. He has since changed the way that we interact with one another, and was named Time's "Person of the Year" last December. The next month, Goldman Sachs valued Facebook at $50 billion -- which makes any previous takeover attempts look almost laughable.
There was MTV, Yahoo and Microsoft. Terry Semel, the former Yahoo CEO who offered Zuckerberg $1 billion in 2006, famously said: “I’d never met anyone -- forget his age, twenty-two then or twenty-six now -- I’d never met anyone who would walk away from a billion dollars. But he said, ‘It’s not about the price. This is my baby, and I want to keep running it, I want to keep growing it.’ I couldn’t believe it.”
So far, Zuckerberg has also won the major legal battles leveraged against Facebook. And Larry Page and Sergey Brin recently acknowledged Facebook's power with the launch of Google+.
He's gained great fame, but The Social Network didn't improve his personal reputation.
Tenure: 1985 - Present
Company growth: 8
Corporate legacy: 9
Personal reputation: 6
Schwarzman was one of the early players in private equity. With only an initial $400,000, he and his co-founder sought to compete against major industry players Salomon Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. With a number of global acquisitions, Blackstone established itself during the era of the leveraged buyout.
But the company gained fame in the mid-2000s, when it acquired popular brands like Hilton Hotels. In 2007, Schwarzman was named the "New King of Wall Street" when Blackstone IPO'd.
As of December 2010, the company is managing $128 billion.
Tenure: 1995 - Present
Company growth: 8
Corporate legacy: 7
Personal reputation: 9
Chambers joined Cisco as an executive in 1991 and was promoted to CEO in 1995, growing the company exponentially during his tenure.
He began a growth strategy immediately, buying up nearly a dozen companies within the first year. Over the next decade, Chambers would spearhead numerous multi-billion dollar acquisitions, including the purchases of Cerent and Linksys.
Now Cisco is the one of the largest technology corporations in the world, with a market cap of $87 billion and annual revenues hitting $40 billion, but the company is planning 4,000-5,000 in layoffs in the coming year due to lower than expected profits.
Tenure: 2004 - Present
Company growth: 8
Corporate legacy: 8
Personal reputation: 8
Dimon has been called America's least-hated banker.
During the recession, JP Morgan fared much better than the rest of its peers on Wall Street. While the bank was forced to accept TARP funds, it was the first to repay them. This was after Dimon orchestrated the firesale of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan in March 2008.
Dimon's deft maneuvering during the economic crisis earned him the respect of President Barack Obama and ear of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. In 2008, Obama said:
"You know, keep in mind, though there are a lot of banks that are actually pretty well managed, JPMorgan being a good example, Jamie Dimon, the CEO there, I don't think should be punished for doing a pretty good job managing an enormous portfolio."
In 2010, the company racked up $102 billion in revenue.
Tenure: 1994 - Present
Company growth: 8
Corporate legacy: 10
Personal reputation: 7
Bezos founded Amazon.com as an online bookstore in 1994, and has since become one of the most successful dot-com entrepreneur billionaires ever.
His greatest accomplishment is developing Amazon’s incredibly efficient business model, adapting the initial non-brick-and-mortar bookstore concept to all goods. He started by diversifying to CDs, DVDs, software and computer games, but soon expanded to sell pretty much everything.
He has made some big acquisitions throughout the years too including Zappos, IMDb, Alexa Internet and Audible.com.
Amazon.com now has a $96 billion market cap and is the biggest online retailer in the world.
Tenure: 1975 - 2000
Company growth: 10
Corporate legacy: 10
Personal reputation: 6
Gates co-founded Microsoft in the mid-1970s and was the key influence in its growth into becoming the biggest tech firm in the world.
Oft-criticized for his vigorously defensive -- even combative -- management style, he kept tight control of the company’s product strategy throughout his tenure and aggressively expanded its portfolio. Several product lines developed under Gates proved incredibly important for Microsoft, including Microsoft Windows and Office.
Gates stepped down from his CEO role in 2000 and the rest of his day-to-day roles in 2006 to devote more time to his charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Tenure: 1981 - 2001
Company growth: 9
Corporate legacy: 8
Personal reputation: 9
Welch's management style is legendary. He earned the nickname "Neutron Jack" for streamlining GE in the 1980s. His philosophy has always been that a company should either be #1 or #2 in an industry, or get out.
He worked his way up the ranks, first joining GE in 1960 as a junior chemical engineer. During his 20 years with the company, he turned GE from a $14 billion manufacturer to a more than $410 billion conglomerate, making it the most valuable and largest company in the world. One of his biggest acquisitions was RCA, primarily for NBC.
In 1999, Fortune named him "Manager of the Century." He created a shift change in American business practices, putting shareholders first, and laying off thousands of GE employees in order to deliver.
“The main social responsibility for a company is to win,” he recently told Fortune.
Tenure: 1976 - 1985; 1996 - 2011
Company growth: 10
Corporate legacy: 10
Personal reputation: 7
Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, but the original team turned to outsiders to run the company in its early stages of growth.
He introduced the Macintosh at the now-legendary annual shareholders meeting in 1984, changing the landscape of the personal computer industry and vaulting Apple into the forefront, but would leave the company a year later due to internal strife.
Jobs then founded his own company called NeXT Computer, and bought part of LucasFilm’s graphics division -- which became Pixar -- before going back to run Apple in 1996.
In the next decade-and-a-half, Jobs would introduce huge hits like the iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad.
Apple grew into a $326 billion market cap tech behemoth before Jobs passed away this fall.
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