1/23/2014 Do You Work For A Top 100 Global CEO? | LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140122133501-13518874-do-you-work-for-a-top-100-global-ceo?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0 1/10

Tweet 89 35

So who is the top CEO in the world? Firstly, in the Top 10, there are none of the CEOs you

might expect from the traditional global corporations – so no Apple, Exxon, 3M or Boeing.

None of the CEOs from companies featured in Jim Collins’ ‘Built To Last’ made it into the Top

10.

A full table of of the Top 100 CEOs is included at the bottom of this article.

The CEOs at the top of this ranking are leading in a different way. They have outperformed on

revenue, profit and shareholder value metrics, because they take the longer view, are more

commercially aggressive and build strong cultures.

We believe that existing rankings of CEOs, such as those from the Harvard Business

Review, lacked full credibility, since they measured only ‘hard’ rankings based on shareholder

value creation, rather than recognizing the real success of the CEO in building a growing and

profitable business during their tenure. We took the top 300 public companies by market cap,

and then applied both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ measures and an expert CEO review.

Where Are The Women Leaders?

What’s disappointing is that only three women make the list, which, like the 4.6% in the

Fortune 500 and 4% in the FTSE 100, is unacceptably low. The women who do are not the

best-known – more prominent female CEOs, such as Ellen Kullman from Du Pont and Indra

Nooyi scored highly on the soft measures and were recognized as good leaders, but the hard

data was not quite enough to get them into the Top 100.

CEOs Should Take Their Time In Saying Goodbye

The study suggests that the best returns can be achieved when the CEOs stick around in the

job. Recent studies have suggested that the average CEO tenure is 4.5-5.5 years, but for our

Top 10 CEOs it came in at 12.5.

Steve's Recent Posts

Do You Do Leadership And

Career Porn?

December 19, 2013

NYC Christmas Snow: Time To

Stop and Reflect

December 15, 2013

Top Posts

Steve Tappin

Do You Work For A Top 100

Global CEO?

45,955 views

John A. Byrne

Private Equity: Where MBA Pay

Is Highest

42,320 views

Dharmesh Shah

12 Things I Want To Teach My

Toddler About Work

25,869 views

Jeff Selingo

Why a Rejection Letter From

Harvard or Other Top Colleges

Can Be Surprisingly Helpful

23,367 views

Ban Ki-moon

The Case for Investing in Girls

19,734 views

40 Posts 32,909 followers FollowSteve TappinCEO Xinfu, Host of BBC CEO Guru & Founder, WorldOfCEOs.com

Do You Work For A Top 100 Global CEO?

January 22, 2014 45,955 358 94

185Like Share 984

See all

Today This Week All

See more

1/23/2014 Do You Work For A Top 100 Global CEO? | LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140122133501-13518874-do-you-work-for-a-top-100-global-ceo?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0 2/10

When a CEO is new in role, they’re typically trying to get on top of the job and ensure that the

company’s got a stable performance. After about 4-5 years, they’re normally at peak

performance and their own personal impact on the business. After about 7-8 years, many find

renewing a business hard. It can take great energy and motivation to change things that they

put in place themselves, to make some difficult people calls, and find the courage to take

something that isn’t broken to a new level.

What’s interesting is that some of these CEOs who’ve created super value have been able to

keep their companies fresh – and it often helps if, like Tencent’s Pony Ma or WPP’s Martin

Sorrell, they founded the company themselves.

North America dominates the table – with nearly half (48%) of the top 100 CEOs – followed by

Europe, with 23%. The ‘BRIC’ countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China also have a

significant presence, with 16%.

So here’s the ranking. Click on the Top 10 CEOs’ names in the table for a full World Of CEOs

Dossier and written profile.

“It's all about the long term.”

Notable achievements:

- Founding Amazon in his spare room with family backing and

floating within 3 years

- Online pioneer: bookselling, retail, consumer electronics,

cloud computing infrastructure/ webservices

- Launch of Kindle & arguable creation of the mass eBook

market

- Exploration and adventure: Blue Origin space flight company & 10,000 year clock

“Business miracles are being born in China

every day. But I think behind every miracle

lies our perseverance, devotion and dream.”

Notable achievements:

- Guiding Tencent to more than 1 Billion monthly

active users of its online apps and more than

$120bn market cap

- Blockbuster products including QQ.com, QQ

(China‟s largest instant messaging service) and

WeChat (smart phone services)

- Tencent now third largest internet company in the world, behind Google & Amazon (bigger

than Twitter & Yahoo combined)

“I think we’ve done a good job of creating an

environment where great entrepreneurs can

build their businesses and have ownership

and accountability for their results”

Notable achievements:

- Turned business around: share price slumped

from over $900 in 1999 to <$10 in 2002 · Grew

share price from low point of <$10 to over

$1,000

- Refocused business early on away from airlines and towards hotels

- Grew business aggressively internationally – now operates in 180 countries

1/23/2014 Do You Work For A Top 100 Global CEO? | LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140122133501-13518874-do-you-work-for-a-top-100-global-ceo?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0 3/10

- Significant acquisitions, inc. Booking.com, Agoda.com and Kayak

“You can walk a straight line in your life, and this line is in our hearts. However,

distractions make us deviate from our original

track, wasting a lot of time. Your own belief is

very strong, we must do the things we want to

do, and not just follow suit.”

- Building an online search giant behind the “Great

Firewall of China”

-Managed to beat the challenge from other

aggressive Chinese online search companies

- Baidu‟s price quadrupled in 24 hours on first listing

Notable achievements:

- Prior to his appointment, building up Samsung‟s

component business, inc the lucrative and

controversial relationship with Apple

- The success of Samsung means they can now go

head to head with Apple

- Has managed to work effectively as part of a 3 man leadership team

Do You – Or Would You Like To – Work For One Of

These CEOs?

We hope that you found this list informative, although would caution that none of above top

100 – or even the top 10 – CEOs is perfect. For instance, there have been some questions

around the Amazon culture, and CEOs must balance friendliness with intensity.

1/23/2014 Do You Work For A Top 100 Global CEO? | LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140122133501-13518874-do-you-work-for-a-top-100-global-ceo?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0 4/10

I note that none of big corporates featured in Jim Collins’ ‘Build To Last’ made it into the Top

1/23/2014 Do You Work For A Top 100 Global CEO? | LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140122133501-13518874-do-you-work-for-a-top-100-global-ceo?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0 5/10

10. Our strong belief is that we need to find a better way to run big companies. We need

leaders who – rather than being overly swayed by sentiment and short-term shareholder

1/23/2014 Do You Work For A Top 100 Global CEO? | LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140122133501-13518874-do-you-work-for-a-top-100-global-ceo?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0 6/10

pressure – are entrepreneurial rather than corporate and take the long-term view. Great

leaders are able to create culture, and the companies they run should become places that

people truly care about.

The Future Of CEO Rankings

This is the first edition of our global Top 100 CEOs ranking. Next year we hope to expand the

list to a Top 250, and include private companies. All rankings are hard and controversial, and

we would have liked to have included some great individuals from Chinese private companies,

such as Alibaba’s Jack Ma, or CEOs with a sustainable mission and great culture, such as

Whole Foods’ John Mackey, who is very successful but whose company doesn’t make the

top 300 by market cap. We expect that this ranking with generate its fair share of controversy,

and welcome your thoughts in the comments section below.

LIKE

Give this a like If you rate some of the CEOs included.

SHARE

If you feel other people would be interested in the above ranking.

COMMENT

What do you think makes a great CEO? Let us know if you feel any CEOs have

been missed and we will flag them up for a future ranking.

FOLLOW:

Do follow me here on LinkedIn as I bring to life what’s happening in the World

Of CEOs on a weekly basis, along with regular leadership, social media, career,

hiring and productivity insights.

JOIN:

Signup for my weekly ‘CEO Insider’ email at:

http://www.worldofceos.com/ceo-insider-signup

-----------------------

By Steve Tappin

Chief Executive, Xinfu, Host BBC CEO Guru & Founder, World Of CEOs

www.twitter.com/SteveTappin

www.worldofceos.com

www.xinfu.com

www.facebook.com/ceoguru

www.bbc.co.uk/ceoguru

Steve is a personal confidant to many of the world’s top CEOs. He is the host of BBC ‘CEO

Guru’, which features in-depth, on-the-record interviews with the CEOs of the biggest and

fastest-growing companies. Founder Of WorldOfCEOs.com, Steve is the author of ‘The

Secrets Of CEOs’, which interviews 200 CEOs on business life and leadership.

Source: this research has been compiled by CEO confidant company Xinfu, of which I am a

director. The ranking has been compiled in good faith from public sources. It is based on an

analysis of public financial data and a systematic, but necessarily subjective, review of public

sources for evidence on which to assess personal leadership against three high level

questions. The scores and ranking will be reviewed annually.

The Ranking is not intended as a personal or comprehensive assessment of a particular

individual’s performance in their office. It is not intended to be relied on by Boards,

Companies, Shareholders, Investors or others to form an assessment of the performance in

role, or suitability for a role, of a specific individual or number of individuals or to form the basis

for investment decisions or for any other purpose.

Xinfu Ltd, its staff, associated businesses, contractors and contributors accept no liability

whatsoever arising out of, or in connection, with the publication, sharing or any use made of

the ranking.

Image credit: Tom Wild / Jim Merathew / ChinaFotoPress

Ads You May Be Interested In

Network Engineers

How operators are cutting the costof O.T.T. traffic. Free white paper.

›

Free Virtualization Paper

Get Spiceworks' latest report onDesktop Virtualization. FreeDownload

›

The Future is M-Commerce

The future of commerce is M-commerce. Find out how!

›

Home Profile Network Jobs Interests Business Services Upgrade

12Search articles...

1/23/2014 Do You Work For A Top 100 Global CEO? | LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140122133501-13518874-do-you-work-for-a-top-100-global-ceo?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0 7/10

Posted by:

Follow

Steve Tappin

(32,909) See all Steve's posts

Newest Oldest Popular94 comments

+ 353

Featured on: Leadership & Management

People who read this post also read: 1-4 of 20

The Advice Not to

Give

When Teams Prevent

Greatness

Innovating at Scale:

Leaders Must Learn...

CEOs See Promise

and Peril in the...

Add your comment...

James Lawes

UK&I Alliances at Hewlett-Packard

No Meg Whitman, CEO of HP? A CEO who has driven the largest IT company in the world to

an 89% share price rise and has consistently beaten Wall Street estimates? A CEO who

previously turned eBay into an internet retail giant? Hmm

Like(18) Reply(1) 13 hours ago

Rebecca R., Cyrene Jacob, Yezhil L., +15

1 Reply

Stephen Baines

Management Consultant

I agree, Meg should of definitely had a mention here as I believe Paul Polman

should (turning failing Unilever into an $80bn organisation in a relatively short space

of time). I do question the validity of this report though given that fair enough, Jeff

Bezos got #1, but Pony Ma as #2... what has he REALLY done outside of China of

the same significance that other GLOBAL leaders have done on a consistent global

scale?

Like(2) 12 hours ago

Vu Thi Thai Ngan and Mohammad Mufti

Racquel Neese

Executive Assistant at Midland States Bank

Behind every exceptional CEO is their Assistant who helps them achieve greatness.

Like(14) Reply(1) 12 hours ago

Amber Weinstock, Marine LE PENNEC, Fiona Ongeso, +11

1 Reply

Amber Weinstock

Researcher at Scientific Research Publishing

Totally agree!

Like 17 seconds ago

Martin Birt

Consulting at HRAskMe.com

Surely the true measure of an effective CEO is the strength, the growth and profitability, of their

business long after his or tenure has ended. Perhaps an interesting study would look at CEOs

1/23/2014 Do You Work For A Top 100 Global CEO? | LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140122133501-13518874-do-you-work-for-a-top-100-global-ceo?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0 8/10

who have been retired (or otherwise moved on) for five or ten years and assess the strength of

their legacy.

Like(11) Reply(3) 13 hours ago

Michael Matiashe, Jesse Shopa, Jagadish Kotagiri, +8

3 Replies

Jonathan Mastrantonas

Commercial Analyst at Reckitt Benckiser

Exactly the way it should be done. Jim Collins states this in his book "Good to

Great" and can often be overlooked by short term thinkers. The journey of Kimberly-

Clark in the late 1900's is a great example of this.

Like 2 hours ago

Patrick Pitre

Technical Solutions Architect for Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence/Big

Data Applications

Excellent view point and kind of what I thought when I saw Tim Cook's name on the

list - what has he done but maintain the status quo of Steve Job's vision?

Like 8 hours ago

Show More

Júlia dos Santos Sales

Human Resources Analyst

What do you think makes a great CEO?

To me it's important that a great CEO must be good with role models, has knowledge in their

fields and work and be respectful. A great CEO needs to know about their all company showing

passion about their duties and be good with negotiation. He has to be clear about your

expectations and to reward employees for good behavior.

Like(5) Reply 15 hours ago

Wuqing Li, Andres Oliver Figueroa, Nolan M Lambert, +2

christina szymankowski

Leasing Specialist NRinvestments

Answer to Julia's q... You can find out what makes a great CEO by examining his team,

employees, colleuges. Thosee people are the back bone of the CEO's success.

Like(5) Reply 14 hours ago

Marine LE PENNEC, Ryson Ruan, Tony Sommer, +2

Scott Michaud

Experienced Executive Communications Professional - Available Soon! Current:

Strategic Comms at Booz Allen Hamilton

Having worked for one of the top CEOs and also the leader of the free world, I can say with

some confidence that leadership, charisma and communication are the foundation for any

successful CEO. You need all three legs to influence, persuade and motivate your workforce,

your clients and your leadership team.

Like(4) Reply 13 hours ago

Yiren W., Donna Wieland, Andre Lorenz, +1

Anita Rooney FIRP CertRP- CEO ARK Recruitment

OWNER & FOUNDER of ARK -RECRUITMENT PROFESSIONAL RECRUITING TOP

PROFESSIONALS FOR TOP COMPANIES

As l prepare for entering into my 4th year going forward as CEO /founder &Chair of ARK

inteRnAtional(after a short spell as MD) my belief is simpy that TOP companys recruit TOP

PEOPLE. role models are success that breed success- that ATTITUDE gives you the 100%.

Nothing nicer or more refreshing than to see a talented and highly skilled female CEO as well.

Companies need this

Like(4) Reply 13 hours ago

Neelesh Yadav, Raphael Manrique, Shereen De Vos, +1

1/23/2014 Do You Work For A Top 100 Global CEO? | LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140122133501-13518874-do-you-work-for-a-top-100-global-ceo?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0 9/10

suresh.ra. one

Lead, Community Relations,Tata Power

Honestly, can we compare apples with rotten tomatoes? Mining companies are being compared with IT

companies? Even an amateur management grad will know that the former and latter operate in totally

different ecosystems. All top five CEOs focus on just the financial bottomline. What about concern for people

and planet? Isn't it a public knowledge that the Chinese ecosystem is dubious on human rights front? And

haven't we read enough about working conditions in Amazon? I also read someone comment on Monsanto. I

am surprised Shell didn't make it to the list!

Like(2) Reply(1) 12 hours ago

Hari Jagannath and Nolan M Lambert

1 Reply

James M.

Project Manager in Healthcare IT at Holland Square Group

I was also surprised when I saw some international companies in the top 20 that are known to

have performed poorly regarding environmental and employee rights and satisfaction issues.

Where did this list come from?

Like 1 hour ago

Sarah Cherian

Engineering Recruiter - at National Oilwell Varco

I love where I work...and for good reason. Great to see Pete Miller as #30 on the list!

Like(2) Reply 12 hours ago

ashish mishra and Nolan M Lambert

Alejandro "Alex" Salas

Management Consultant at IQPC Exchange/ Sales

I like this read. When a company grows is because of the team and the way the CEO and

Management team work with all the company. When they forget who and why thats when

companies stop growing and start falling. And many CEO's are not in the list because of that.

Like(1) Reply 13 hours ago

Steve Tappin

Harold Aranda

Designing self-funded private pensions as a tax advantaged alternative to the 401(k).

CA Life/Health Licensee

Tabloid journalism creeps into LinkedIn. All that matters is how can a person in a leadership

position identify, attract and nurture talent to become leaders of their own in the organization.

Like(1) Reply 13 hours ago

Nolan M Lambert

Murali A

Lead Research Specialist at Azuga, Inc.

I will be the great CEO in the world.

Like(1) Reply 12 hours ago

Steven LEE

Michael Liu

Investing

Be the man you want to be.

Like(1) Reply 13 hours ago

Yiren W.

Bin Chen

Senior software engineer at Intel

Excited to know 2 Chinese CEO are on the TOP 5!

Like(1) Reply 6 hours ago

1/23/2014 Do You Work For A Top 100 Global CEO? | LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140122133501-13518874-do-you-work-for-a-top-100-global-ceo?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0 10/10

Help Center About Press Blog Careers Advertising Talent Solutions Tools Mobile Developers Publishers Language Upgrade Your Account

LinkedIn Corporation © 2014 User Agreement Privacy Policy Community Guidelines Cookie Policy Copyright Policy Send Feedback

Yiren W.

Jiajian Eric ZHOU

Packaging Buyer at CHANEL - Looking for New Opportunities

2 Chinese CEOs in the Top 5!

Like(1) Reply 5 hours ago

Yiren W.

Lily P. Orticio PhD, MBA, RN

Nurse Director/Administrator interested in leadership positions willing to relocate

Healthcare CEOs not in the list (???).

Like Reply 13 hours ago

Eric Hart

CEO at 4 Philip dot Org

christina szymankowski is correct. A CEO's success isn't measured by his efforts, it's the

team behind him in support of the vision that drives success for all. The CEO is responsible to

rally his team and also be accountable to them.

Like Reply 13 hours ago

Auke Beerschoten

CEO at Assureflex Corporation

I work for a "Top 3 CEO", me.

Like Reply 13 hours ago

Dmitry Petrov

GR/Corporate affairs

Great, Carlos is in TOP10. Fine result for Beer industry.

Like Reply 13 hours ago

Jeff Wooten

VP - Technology Relationship Manager | North American Credit Card Technology at TD

Nice job to Ed Clark at TD Bank for being #43 on the list...

Like Reply 13 hours ago

Show More