Steve’s #1!

Imagine it’s 1985 and your being asked to resign/ fired from the company you helped found and build, only to comeback in 1997 with your innovated ideas and hard work to make the company number in it’s industry. That’s just a short summary of what Steve jobs has experienced in a little over a decade. So, its only fitting that he’s at the top of the CEO list compiled by the INSEAD business school, set to be released in the January-February 2010 edition of Harvard Business Review.  The list, being the first official global ranking of CEO’s, complies 2,000 CEO’s that assumed their job no earlier than January 1995 and no later than December 2007 and does not measure the business men by popularity or ethics but simply their financial importance to a company and its shareholders.

“Created by three INSEAD professors, the ranking is based on a global data set of some 2,000 CEOs of 48 nationalities and from companies in 33 countries. CEO’s from companies in the S&P Global 1200 and S&P BRIC 40 lists since 1997 were measured on three metrics during their tenure: industry-adjusted total shareholder return (TSR); country-adjusted TSR; and change in market capitalisation.”

Since his return in 1996 when his company NeXT Computer was acquired by Apple, Steve Jobs has delivered an amazing 3,188% industry-adjusted return (34% compounded annually) after he rejoined Apple as CEO in 1997. “From that time until the end of September 2009, Apple’s market value increased by $150 billion.” the report states.

Now, I know your asking yourself, “Where’s Steve’s quote/unquote rival, Bill Gates on the list?”. Well, he was was one of the few CEO’s excluded from the list seeing that he and others were in control of the respective companies long before the January 1995 start date. Along with this list, just recently Steve Jobs was named “CEO of the Decade” by Fortune Magazine and is in the running for Time’s “Person of the Year”, we’ll see how many more list Steve and Apple top in the years to come.