The Best-Performing CEOs in the World

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 the first ranking that shows which CEOs of large public companies performed best over their entire time in office--or, for those still in the job, up until September 30, 2009. It may come as no shock that Steve Jobs of Apple tops the list. However, the ranking does contain a few surprises. The list list overlaps very little with lists of the most-admired or highest-paid CEOs. A wide diversity of countries and industries was represented among the top performers. The data highlight the great extent to which CEOs account for variations in company performance, beyond those due to industry, country, and economic swings. That drives home how important it is to use objective, long-term measures to assess CEOs and to inform CEO searches and succession planning.