Top 10 Most Powerful People in Business of The World.
Some are empire builders. Others are hired guns. But if they truly have world-class oomph, they're on Fortune's subjective - yet really quite accurate - list of the most powerful businesspeople in the world.
1. Steve Jobs
Chairman and CEO, Apple .
During the first two decades of his remarkable 30-year career, the Apple Inc. founder twice altered the direction of the computer industry. In 1977 the Apple II kicked off the PC era, and the graphical user interface launched by Macintosh in 1984 has been aped by every other computer since. Along the way Jobs conceived of "desktop publishing," gave the world the laser printer, and pioneered personal computer networks. As a side gig he bankrolled Pixar, which fostered the development of the technology and a brand-new business model for creating computer-animated feature films.
Since returning to Apple in 1997, he has changed the dynamics of consumer electronics with the iPod, and persuaded the music industry, the television networks, and Hollywood to distribute their wares with the iTunes Music Store. With his hugely successful Apple Stores, he gave the big-box boys a lesson in high-margin, high-touch retailing. And this year, at the height of his creative and promotional powers, Jobs orchestrated Apple's entry into the cellular telephone business with the iPhone.
That's five industries that Jobs has upended - computers, Hollywood, music, retailing, and wireless phones. At this moment, no one has more influence over a broader swath of business than Jobs.
2. Rupert Murdoch
Chairman and CEO, News Corp.
News Corp. is a global force across the board - film, television, print, and even online.
Murdoch wanted more, and he got it with the $5 billion acquisition of Dow Jones. It was the crowning achievement of a career that started in 1953 when he inherited control of two Australian newspapers. Murdoch expanded to Britain in the 1960s, the U.S. in the '70s, and Asia in the 1990s. In Britain he owns the biggest tabloid, the Sun, and in the U.S. the New York Post and his Fox News Network are known for their take-no-prisoners attitude.
Derided by his critics as a tabloid hound all too willing to kowtow to China for the sake of commercial gain, the purchase of the Wall Street Journal was a particularly sweet victory.
At 76, Murdoch appears to be at the height of his powers. He views Dow Jones, along with the recent launch of the Fox Business Network, as steps in the creation of a globe-spanning financial news powerhouse. Can he do it? The breadth of his ambition could be his Achilles heel - the more dominant News Corp. becomes, the more opposition it tends to provoke. Still, Murdoch has proved time and again that counting him out is a high-risk strategy.
3. Lloyd Blankfein
Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs.
Wall Street firms are taking multibillion-dollar write-offs. Titans of finance are losing their jobs. But through it all, Goldman Sachs keeps making money. The i-bank reported stellar third-quarter results: Earnings per share almost doubled from the prior year, and return on equity was 36.6%.
CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who took over last spring, gets credit for helping steer Goldman away from the most damaging investments. And Goldman, which says it has limited exposure to the subprime mess, stands confirmed - for now, anyway - as the smartest bank on the Street.
4. Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergei Brin
CEO: President, Products: President, Technology: Google.
The ambitions of Brin and Page, Google's 34-year-old founders, are pretty much boundless. Sure, they've already revolutionized - okay, massively disrupted - the advertising industry. But the billionaires aren't stopping there. They've set their sights on altering how mobile telephones work, fixing climate change, utterly redefining the very nature of work, that sort of thing.
Preposterous? Actually, there's a method to their madness. Despite endless predictions that Google would run itself off the rails, the duo, along with CEO Eric Schmidt, have shown a good deal of management maturity. They've been willing to build (AdWords, their search-based advertising service) as well as buy (YouTube). And they've defied critics who said they couldn't operate their company for the long term.
5. Warren Buffett
Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway.
Buffett has built Berkshire Hathaway into a massive holding company with interests ranging from underwear to private jets (2006 revenues: $98 billion). Of course it's impressive that since 1965, Berkshire has performed more than twice as well as the S&P 500. Of course it's amazing that Buffett has made millions from something as toxic as Enron bonds. And of course it is somehow unsurprising that he managed to help broker a deal between A-Rod and the New York Yankees.
But the source of Buffett's influence is found in his nickname: the "Sage of Omaha." CEOs - and athletes, obviously, including LeBron James - venture to Nebraska to consult him. And people everywhere listen to his pronouncements on things like managed earnings (against), stock option expensing (for), and the U.S. dollar (pessimistic).
6. Rex Tillerson
Chairman and CEO, Exxon Mobil.
An oilman down to his boots, Tillerson makes no apologies for running the world's biggest non-state-run oil company. Exxon Mobil gets high marks for the quality of its operations, and its stock has out-distanced the S&P 500 on Tillerson's watch. He has even made something of a modest PR splash by acknowledging the possibility of global warming, something his prickly predecessor never did. Exxon under Tillerson has learned that it needn't pick a fight in order to throw around its weight. --Jon Birger
7. Bill Gates
Founder, chairman of Microsoft.
Founder and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Bill Gates remains the iconic technologist, entrepreneur, and business leader of his generation. He invented the software industry, masterminded the rise of the PC, and has hung in there as a force on the Internet. Still intent upon transforming how people work and communicate, now Gates is pushing software to handle all aspects of office communications, from your phone to e-mail to instant messaging. His software powers smartphones and will show up soon in television set-top boxes. And he has hooked up with upstarts like Facebook to channel the energy and advertising potential of social networks.
Since 2000 he's had a new kind of power through the charitable activities of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates is expected to retire from Microsoft next year and devote most of his time to the foundation, which has an endowment of $33 billion - and the promise of tens of billions more from his close friend and occasional bridge partner Warren Buffett (No. 5). The foundation has global aspirations to improve health care and reduce poverty. His other goal: reinventing philanthropy itself, much as he did information technology.
8. Jeff Immelt
Chairman and CEO, GE
General Electric's chief executive is powerful for many reasons, but here's one that's often overlooked: the company's AAA credit rating. Only six U.S. industrial corporations hold that credential, and it gives GE a huge competitive advantage in the finance-related businesses that bring in most of its profit. It also helps the company sell its big-ticket products - jet engines, industrial turbines, CT scanners, locomotives, and so forth - by offering financing that competitors can't beat. Add a century of experience in developing the world's best managers and management practices, and GE becomes a very tough organization to catch up with or oppose.
As if running a company like that didn't make him powerful enough, Immelt is also chairman of the Business Council, the group of top-tier CEOs that influences government policy, and on the board of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
9. Katsuaki Watanabe
President, Toyota.
Katsuaki Watanabe became president of the world's most admired company in 2005, he took the wheel of a well-oiled machine. But he is making his own mark on it, urging the company, which earned $14.1 billion last year, to keep getting better. He launched a quality-improvement campaign that helped make the debut of the 2008 Highlander SUV just about trouble-free and has the company on track to overtake General Motors for good as the world's largest automaker. His ultimate goal: a car that can drive across the U.S. on a single tank of gas. At the speed he has Toyota moving, you can pencil that in for 2050.
10. A.G. Lafley
Chairman and CEO, Procter & Gamble.
Since taking charge in 2000, when Procter & Gamble was sinking under the weight of too many new products and organizational changes, Lafley has refocused on consumers and rejuvenated core businesses. P&G now boasts 23 billion-dollar brands, including Tide, Crest, Pampers, Gillette, Olay, Pantene, and the latest addition, Gain laundry detergent.
By denouncing insularity and demanding innovation in everything that P&G does, this company lifer has pushed P&G toward higher-margin areas like health, beauty, and personal care. The payback: Profits have tripled on his watch, to more than $10 billion on $76.5 billion in revenues.
Lafley has bought some of that growth; the acquisition of Gillette for $54 billion in 2005 was the largest in company history. But it is the record of organic growth - an average of 6% a year - that has made P&G a stock market standout and Lafley a role model for other CEOs.
