The 50 Best CEOs May 2001... Stunning

While I was doing some organizing today, I came across an old magazine I had purchased sometime around May 2001. The magazine is Worth, and the cover caught my eye with "The 50 Best CEOs" and of course it had Enron's Jeff Skilling which immediately sparked my interest. Talk about a major change! Some of the CEOs listed in this this magazine will go down as some of the biggest crooks ever, but of course I agree with many of the CEO's listed in the list of 50.

I decided I would post "The 50 Best CEOs" according to Worth as you may find it as interesting as I did. NOTE: the % indicated after each CEOs Company is the 3-Year Return, if it is in parenthesis it is a negative return.

1. Steve Ballmer - Microsoft - 42%
2. Jeffrey Skilling - Enron - 200%
3. Phillip Purcell - Morgan Stanley - 76%
4. James Morgan - Applied Materials - 192%
5. Margaret (Meg) Whitman - eBay - 59%
6. Lawrence Ellison - Oracle - 284%
7. Koichi Nishimura - Solectron - 157%
8. John Chambers - Cisco Systems - 102%
9. Scott McNealy - Sun Microsystems - 269%
10. Dennis Kozlowski - Tyco International - 105%
11. David Pottruck - Charles Schwab - 118%
12. Steve Jobs - Apple Computer - 78%
13. James McNeaney JR. - 3M - 39%
14. Steven Appleton - Micron Technology - 141%
15. Jeffrey Immelt - General Electric - 69%
16. Henry Paulson JR. - Goldman Sachs - 18%
17. Kenneth Freeman - Quest Diagnostics - 492%
18. Steven Burd - Safeway - 55%
19. Frederick Smith - Fedex - 32%
20. Craig Barrett - Intel - 58%
21. Michael Dell - Dell Computer - 48%
22. Richard Fairbank - Capital One - 148%
23. Kenneth Chenault - American Express - 42%
24. James Kelly - UPS - 12.3% (1-Year Return)
25. Robert Ulrich - Target - 90%
26. William McGuire - UnitedHealth Group - 89%
27. George David - United Technologies - 88%
28. James Truchard - National Instruments - 113%
29. Richard Kovacevich - Wells Fargo - 23%
30. Henry Nicholas III - Broadcom - 21%
31. Robert Nardelli - Home Depot - 103%
32. Arthur Levinson - Genentech - 48%
33. Gordon Bethune - Continental Airlines - 18.4%
34. Ronald DeFeo - Terex - (16%)
35. Leonard Schaeffer - Wellpoint Health Networks - 76%
36. William Wise - El Paso - 136%
37. Robrt Walter - Cardinal Health - 88%
38. Alain Belda - Alcoa - 117%
39. Kevin Knight - Knight Transportation - 20%
40. Russell Lewis - New York Times Company - 35%
41. Dan Akerson - XO Communications - 60%
42. Jacques Nasser - Ford Motor - (9%)
43. Roger Jarvis - SPinnaker Exploration - 70%
44. Jure Sola - Sanmina - 258%
45. David D'Alessandro - John Hancock Financial - 131%
46. Douglas Rock - Smith International - 50%
47. William Roelandts - Xilinx - 307%
48. John Wren - Omnicom - 107%
49. Clark McLeod - McLeod USA - 78%
50. William Wrigley JR. - WM. Wrigley JR. 27%

And there you have the 50 best CEOs in May 2001 from Worth. Which is ironic because some of these CEOs actually made the company value worthless. Note how many of these CEOs are still the CEO today, not to mention some of the companies that have went bankrupt or suffered very hard times lately.


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