The Best-Performing CEOs in the World

A lot of people have blamed short-term thinking for causing our current economic troubles, which has set off a debate about what time window we should use to assess a CEO's performance. Today boards of directors, senior managers, and investors intensely want to know how CEOs handle the ups and downs of running businesses over an extended period. Many executive compensation plans define the "long term" as a three-year horizon, but the real test of a CEO's leadership has to be how the company does over his or her full tenure. This article contains a list of the 50 CEOs of large public companies who performed best over their entire time in office-or, for those still in the job, up until September 30, 2009. To compile the results, the authors collected data on close to 2,000 CEOs worldwide. They asked, Who had led firms that, on the basis of stock returns, outperformed other firms in the same country and industry? The ranking combines three measures: country-adjusted return, industry-adjusted return, and change in market capitalization during tenure. While it may come as no shock that Steve Jobs of Apple tops the list, the ranking does contains a few surprises. You'll see some relatively unknown faces at the top. The inverse is also true: Some obvious candidates based on reputation don't make the top 50. The authors' analysis of the factors that increased the likelihood that an executive would place high in the ranking turned up a few more surprises. Although one might expect context to have a big effect, they found a wide diversity of countries and industries represented in the top performers. The CEO's background did matter, however, as did the situation left behind by his or her predecessor.

• Leadership
• Business leaders
• Executives