Page 26 - Harvard Business Review, November-December 2018

100 The Ranking

1 PABLO ISLA, INDITEX 

COUNTRY START YEAR INDUSTRY
SPAIN 2005 RETAIL

INSIDER MBA FINANCIAL RANKING

  29

SUSTAINALYTICS RANKING CSRHUB RANKING
60 128

2 JENSEN HUANG, NVIDIA 

3 BERNARD ARNAULT , LVMH 

4 FRANÇOIS-HENRI PINAULT, KERING 

This consistency is the result not just of an unwavering leadership style but of the way HBR

measures performance. In a business world that often seems obsessed with today’s stock price

and this quarter’s numbers, our ranking takes the long view: It’s based primarily on financial
returns over each CEO’s entire tenure—and because these CEOs have been successful, many have

enjoyed a long run in the job. (CEOs on the list have been in the position for an average of 16

years, versus an average in 2017 of 7.2 years for S&P 500 CEOs.) To calculate the final rankings,

we also factor in each company’s rating on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues.

This focus on career numbers results in a
Methodology & Data ranking with limited annual churn. Seven of this

To compile our list of the world’s best- year’s top 10, and 18 of the top 25, were ranked
performing CEOs, we began with the at those levels last year. In a typical year, from
companies that at the end of 2017 were one-quarter to one-third of CEOs in the prior
in the S&P Global 1200, an index that
comprises 70% of the world’s stock year’s ranking fall off owing to retirement,
market capitalization and includes