25 most powerful people in business

Lafley is just one of many reasons why our economy is in crisis. I am sorry but I thought our country was about NOT monopolizing to give small companies a chance?! I am a small business owner in the beauty industry, P&G every year make my job and stylist around the country job’s hard!! We have to educate our clients that anyone that sells Tide and Gillete razors their main concern is not putting the best ingredients into their haircare lines. I am sicken by P&G, Susan Arnold and Lafley!!

Over the last 20 years, I think of what has made the most impact:
o energy — pick Aramco, ExxonMobil & Shell, Gazprom and their leaders.
o technology – IBM, Gates, Intel, Jobs, Google, Cisco, Dell, Nokia
o finance – globalization & failure, not sure I can vote for GSachs cause they didn’t lose money — maybe Buffet, JP Morgan, Fidelity, Vanguard
Manufacturing — must pick someone to represent the China powerhouse — the manufacturer for the world
Auto — must be Toyota, Honda, BMW, premier major and niche car maker — remade the blueprint for car manufacturing, almost doesn’t make sense to buy another car if you are concerned about quality.

Don’t agree with:
Immelt: GE has been an incredibly poor performer since Welsh left. It’s an embarrassment.
Blankfein: cause their still in business doesn’t make him one of the top 10.

Although you didn’t ask about politicians, what about Gorbachov & Reagan — what an impact – it’s still being sorted out.

After all of that seriousness, I would next vote for Ali, Steinbrenner & Woods. And, in a vote for Texas, lets go for Ben Hogan and Chuck Norris!

What a joke that Dimon is a great CEO.
This is the company who cancelled my credit card when I have never been late, pay my bill every month, and never even had a balance carry over. They will never get my business ever again.

Ah the benefit of hindsight…

I believe power and giving should go hand and hand. What is the benefit of having billions on your name if you are not giving back.

Mr. Slim might be the richest in the world but who cares if the rates from his services are so expensive and the average Mexican cannot afford it. Is he giving back? Please tell me what.

Who cares what Exxonmobil have got or Mr.Rex Tillerson have.I can only speak for myself and my observation in the market I am.Every day I see some Mobil dealers In Miami Florida are out of gas and big Exxonmobil cannot deliver the fuel on time.Size does not matter in this case performance does.Some body is not doing his job and company does not care because they are making tons of money elsware.

No wonder the Windows people hate him.

Ratan Tata, i think deserves his place. i dont know of others but he does a lot positive for the world and India than the others mentioned. atleast he is ethical is his words and actions. he is a fighter…

Beyond pathetic

bernard arnult has required controlling shares at princess yachts.

Being powerful also means being hated as in the case of those conniving, manipulative, moral pigmy, money grubbing Google S.O.B.’s. Oh, and they ruined the internet too! Go Monetize poverty why dont you?

Dear Shawn,

Would like to make a small correction. # 15, Jamie Dimon as fresh MBA from Harvard, worked with Sandy Weill from 1982 till 1998.

Cheers,
Rahul

Where are all the Saudi oil people. I guess they don’t fit into YOUR FORTUNE list any better than my other comment.

Some of the executives on this list are , I believe, the real terrorists trying to destroy our way of life. Think about it. The manufacturing execs. decide to shift their factories to a foriegn country and save on expenses. So the widget that sells for $10.00 now can be made for $3.00 less but it will still sell for $10.00. We not only loose jobs but get ripped off in the process.

As a female executive on wall street I find it disappointing to find only 1 woman in the top 25. Have we not turned the corner on this…

Quite common for the mexican culture is to believe that Carlos Slim Helú is the bussiness face of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (former Mexico’s President). If this is true or not, this shadow on him reduces a lot his image and power even inside Mexico.

The Rockefellers are a greedy bunch.

Mark Hurd is making HP one of the best company in the world, but beeing thier employees the victims…

Carlos Slim is at 20° place because being extremly rich doesn’t necessarly mean power.

The rockefellers are way more powerful than some of the men mentioned in this list, for example.

dont like how any of those people do business at all….

In this day and age, it is unimaginably antiquated to continue to measure business success in terms of 200-year old industrial-age yardstick of consumerism-through-marketing manipulation. Sure, I get the planned obsolescence in introducing new iPods every six months. But do we really need 437 mp3 players? Or 20,000 brands of beer? Excess is not success. It is equally insane to idolize these egomanical captains of industry whose consumerism-above-all methods of business have led us to question the food we eat and the water we drink. And it surely is a high time to question our own value system when we begin to idolize industrial tyrants who take pleasure in being universally feared and who can make people cry. Think different. But make it different enough to make a difference. Our only hope is that in the next lifetime, Jobs will come back as Jeff Skoll.

From the Orion Spur in Milky Way Galaxy,

John Kumpunen

Please don’t bother arguing about Steve Jobs’s position. I think the letter ‘i’ is working for him. Sure. Check it out in his soft-top and underware, ‘Software’. I love him.

The fact that I am not included in your list of 25 means that I have hidden myself well. The truth is that I and my family should be number one, but who wants the publicity, threats, and extortion? Not us. So, dream on, Fortune, you haven’t a clue.

I’m constantly amazed that Jack Brennan, CEO of Vanguard, continues to go unnoticed. Not only has he lead Vanguard’s meteoric rise in the mutual fund industry, he’s incredibly influential in Congress as well. Under his watch, his $1.3 trillion organization has never had layoffs, and continues to come out unscathed with each and every financial industry scandal.

Please,

Indra Nooyi. The woman sells Pepsico. It rots your teeth. Is gross revenue alone your bottom-line? How in the world could you leave out Oprah? Okay, so her audience is largely North American. But her influence is far greater and far more positive among a smaller demographic than the world-wide draw from an unhealthy product.

Jon Klein
Gleneden Beach, Oregon USA

Sorry guys but your facts about Steve need some clearing up. Xerox invented Ethernet networking. Check the patend. Xerox also created the GUI and desktop publishing or did you guys forget about Ventura? I’m sure you news boys/girls should remember that tool. Yep. Xerox made that one too.

And, let’s not forget all those lawsuits by Apple claiming they invented the GUI. Last time I checked, Xerox told them to cool it or be sued.

Now, I’m not a big fan of Xerox or Apple or any other company and I pick my hardware and OS based on my applications. But, let’s keep the facts straight.

Steve and his partner Steve revolutionized the education and new print industries but that’s it.

i dont understand how can carlos slim be the riches man in the world by his buisneses an be the 20 position what are you doing

What about Carlos Slim

Steve Jobs the most powerful?? What the hell? Is your company just jumping on the Apple fanboy bandwagon or do you actually believe that? There are businesses out there (Auto, electronics etc.) that make Apple look like a lemonade stand. And consquently the top people behind them make Jobs look like a bellboy. You have got this wrong and have compromised your journalistic principals for a few extra web hits.

Well done.

I have great respect for Steve Jobs and for his career achievements and I might even agree with the general conclusion regarding his visionary talent and his power to make dreams happened. Nevertheless, I think we are rushing into conclusions regarding his revolutionary contributions to all those industries and regarding the uniqueness of the “Jobs Phenomenon”.

First, Jobs contribution to the mobile telephone market is rather marginal, iPhone being far from revolutionizing anything in this direction. I think there are a lot of other companies and businessmen who have defined and developed this segment, with far more consistent contributions than Steve Jobs. Of course, his presence on this market will be probable spectacular and we should expect an impressive follow-up, but Steve Jobs still has to earn his praise in this matter.

Second, I would be eager to see/hear/read some criteria of differentiation for the “Most Powerful People in Business” title, I think Fortune has overlooked a lot of people who have either had great contributions to several industries but didn’t shine so bright as Jobs, or were involved in less brighter industries and had less media cover. What makes a man the most powerful in business after all?

Ohoh, Fortune has dared open Pandora’s box! Apple is despised by tiny empire IT managers everywhere. Now it turns out that its not the Apple Fanboys who have been wrong all of these years.

Although my question does not imply I wanted to see her in the 25 Most Powerful People In Business list, but where is Oprah Winfrey? workonline

PepsiCo’s CEO smartness notwithstanding, I would say FORTUNE must be suffering from a kind of US-blindness to mention Ms NOOYI as the most powerful CEO of a Food Company, and to forget NESTLE’s CEO. Last time I checked, NESTLE was the biggest (and greatest) food company in the world. When talking about global, NESTLE was global even before FORTUNE made that word fashionable.
Your list is subjective, indeed…

where is ALWALEED bin talal????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Yes. He is the Apple of my eye.

Steve Jobs is also the largest shareholder of Walt Disney Company/ This makes his reach into entertainment and media even more powerful.

Ummm…I thought it was the ORACLE of Omaha???!!!