1. 2. 25 Most Influential business leaders
http://www.usatoday.com/money/top25-leaders.htm
Business' most notorious
The past 25 years have been a period of dazzling growth for the U.S. economy,
powered by innovative companies led by brilliant — and sometimes notorious —
entrepreneurs and CEOs and one Federal Reserve maestro.
These leaders — with products ranging from coffee to microprocessors — are the 25
most influential business leaders of the past 25 years, as ranked by USA TODAY's
Money section editors and reporters.
AFP/Getty Images
1 Bill Gates, Microsoft
Gates co-founded Microsoft and used tough business tactics to dominate PC operating
systems. But his most lasting influence may be in philanthropy as he gives away his
$56 billion fortune.
2Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman
Greenspan was the maestro who presided over the longest
economic expansion in U.S. history. His words moved
global markets and still do, even out of office.
By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY
By Justin Sullivan, Getty Images
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2. 3 Steve Jobs, Apple
Co-founder of Apple, Jobs was ousted in a boardroom coup in 1985. But he prospered
in exile, buying Pixar, the company that redefined animation. He returned to Apple in
1997, and the rest is history: iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone.
By Ben Margot, AP
4 Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google founders
The two Stanford University grad students founded Google in 1998, and in less than a
decade, the innovative search company has grown to dominate online searches and
advertising.
Bloomberg News.
5 Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines
Kelleher, now chairman, expanded low-cost airline Southwest's service nationwide
over the past 25 years and created a fun-loving corporate culture that changed the
flying experience for millions of people, on top of saving them billions on fares.
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3. By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY
6 Andy Grove, Intel
Grove popularized the phrase quot;only the paranoid survive,quot; but the paranoia paid off:
Grove's leadership helped create tech behemoth Intel with a market cap of more than
$150 billion.
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY
7 Jack Welch, General Electric
With Welch as CEO from 1981-2001, GE's market value grew from $14 billion to
$410 billion. But his most enduring legacy may be the lieutenants who left to run
other companies, such as Boeing's James McNerney.
Getty Images
8 Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway
The Sage of Omaha pushed the price of Berkshire Hathaway, his holding company, up
more than 14,000% the past 25 years, and his public statements, particularly his
annual reports, are read more closely than any other document in business.
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4. Bloomberg News
9 Charles Schwab, investments
Schwab saw the promise in a no-frills, low-cost brokerage and ran with it, making
stock trading affordable to a new generation of investors. Today, he's probably the
nation's most visible advocate of do-it-yourself investing.
By Fred Prouser, Reuters
10 Michael Milken, junk bonds
Milken may conjure up images of inside trading (he served two years in prison for
violating securities laws), but his legacy is providing financing to entrepreneurs. He
raised money from investors in the form of high-yield debt (junk bonds) to finance
start-ups such as MCI.
By Marcus R. Donner, AP
11 Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com
Bezos helped ignite the dot-com boom when he founded Amazon.com to sell books
online. Amazon weathered the dot-com bust, and is one of the most popular Web
retailers
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5. By Mike Segar, Reuters
12 Rupert Murdoch, News Corp.
The last and most polarizing of the larger-than-life megamedia moguls, Murdoch has
left his mark on TV, movies, newspapers, books, sports, the Internet and,if Dow Jones
accepts his $5 billion acquisition offer, The Wall Street Journal.
By Rogelio Solis, AP
13 Frederick Smith, FedEx
Smith founded Federal Express in 1973, creating the business category of overnight
delivery. Now, the Memphis-based company is a $35.2-billion-a-year global operator
that includes heavy freight, trucking and supply-chain management, plus the
FedEx/Kinko's retail stores.
By Jack Smith, AP
14 Phil Knight, Nike
Knight re-imagined sneakers into pricey, gotta-have-em jock wear. He plopped a pair
of Nikes onto young Michael Jordan, and both took off and never stopped running.
Bo, Lance and Tiger followed. Just do it. He did it.
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6. By Jessica Kourkounis, AP
15 Ken Lay, Enron
Ken Lay was the public face of the energy company that became the poster child for
bad corporate behavior in the 21st century. After Enron's collapse in an accounting
scandal, similar frauds surfaced at WorldCom and elsewhere, leading to the passage
of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the most sweeping reform of securities laws in 70 years.
By Charles Rex Arbogast. AP
16 Oprah Winfrey, Harpo
Oprah was the first woman to produce and own her own TV show and that led to a
media empire that includes TV, Broadway-show production, O magazine, a website
and mini-series production.
Bloomberg News
17 Michael Dell, Dell
Why waste your college years on beer if you can create a giant company in your dorm
room? At 19, Dell took $1,000 and started a computer maker he named after himself.
A decade or so later, it was the world's largest maker of PCs.
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7. By David McNew, Getty Images
18 Meg Whitman, eBay
Meg Whitman left her job as general manager for Hasbro's preschool division to join
eBay as CEO in May 1998. Today, she's still leading one of dot-com 誷 biggest
successes. EBay, a marketplace for buyers and sellers across the world, has become
one of the Web's most-imitated phenomena
AFP/Getty Images
19 Howard Schultz, Starbucks
Schultz was first to have the chutzpah – or foresight – to turn a cup of coffee into a $4
luxury. And he's doing it worldwide. Only question is if he can turn Starbucks into a
McBrand as McBig as you-know-McWho.
By Shawn G. Henry
20 Edward C. quot;Nedquot; Johnson 3d, Fidelity Investments
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8. Johnson may not have invented every innovation in the mutual fund industry, but he
brought them to more investors than anyone else. Discount brokerage, sector funds,
money-fund check writing, charitable endowment funds and more helped propel
Fidelity to its place as the largest fund complex in the USA.
NBC
21Martha Stewart, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
Stewart created a business segment based on how-to crafts and lifestyle information.
Not even a conviction for lying could destroy Martha's popularity.
By Eileen Blass, USA TODAY
22 John Bogle, The Vanguard Group
Bogle founded The Vanguard Group in 1975 with the radical notion that funds should
be owned and managed by shareholders. A tireless advocate of low-cost index
investing, Bogle has won a cadre of adoring loyalists called quot;Bogleheads.quot; At the
same time, he drove Vanguard to second among all mutual fund complexes.
By Diane Bondareff, AP
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9. 23 Robert Johnson, BET
A trailblazer for minority entrepreneurs, Johnson founded cable's Black Entertainment
Television in 1979. He sold it in 2002 to Viacom for $3 billion, making him the first
African-American billionaire. Other firsts: first black-owned business to go public on
the NYSE and first African-American to wholly own a professional sports team, the
NBA's Charlotte Bobcats.
By Gregory Bull. AP
24 Barry Diller, Expedia, IAC
Hollywood thought the man who greenlighted hits including Beverly Hills Cop was
crazy in 1992 when he became a TV home-shopping mogul. But the business evolved
into e-commerce, and Diller created an Internet power that includes Ticketmaster,
Citysearch, Match.com, Evite and LendingTree.
By Marty Lederhandler, AP
25Steve Case, AOL
Case was a marketing guy who rose through the ranks at AOL and was CEO for a
decade before the ill-fated merger with Time Warner in 2001. He didn't run AOL Time
Warner as chairman and later resigned. But his original AOL Web portal introduced
millions of non-techies to the Internet with its simple, goof-proof format. And that's
his legacy.
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