Who can be included in the rating of the best businessmen of 2016? To answer this question, business magazine Fortune (published by Time Inc) ranked famous companies by 12- and 36-month increases in earnings, share prices, return on equity and debt. Intangible assets were also taken into account: is the CEO influencing global business, is he taking bold and forward-looking steps?
We present you the top 10 most prosperous and influential businessmen of the outgoing year, according to Fortune.
10. Jack Ma
Position: Executive Chairman of the Alibaba Group
He is the only mainland Chinese businessman to be featured on the cover of Forbes magazine. The Alibaba company he founded is now one of the world's leading e-commerce web portals. One of the structures of Alibaba is the most popular online store Aliexpress in Russia.
9. Rodney Sachs
Position: CEO of Monster Beverage.
Energy drinks remain at their peak and Rodney Sachs' company is thriving. In 1992, he and Hilton Schlossberg acquired the highly respected but troubled Hansen's Natural beverage business for $ 14.6 million. Ten years later, they and their colleague Mark Hall introduced a completely different drink: a Red Bull competitor called Monster Energy. Monster Beverage made a record $ 546 million in revenue last year.
8. Cheng Wei
Position: CEO Didi Chuxing.
When Uber launched its taxi service in China a few years ago, it looked like it would dominate the Asian market like the United States. But then Uber ran into Cheng Wei, who teamed up its smaller alternative with a similar-sized local competitor. This is how Didi Chuxing was born and began waging a costly war of attrition with Uber. Didi Chuxing taxis appeared in 400 cities in China, while Uber was in only a few dozen. Uber admitted defeat this summer by selling its China division to Didi Chuxing.
7. Ren-Sun Huang
Position: CEO of Nvidia
Nvidia has relied on two trendy technologies: artificial intelligence and virtual reality. As virtual reality slowly goes from expensive entertainment to mundane, large numbers of consumers may need computers with high-performance GPUs and VR headsets. Huang's bet on the right horses confirms the fact that Nvidia shares have more than doubled in price over the past year.
6. Brad Smith
Position: CEO of Intuit
Intuit sold its original Quicken (personal finance software) this year. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Last summer, Brad Smith clarified that Quicken, which lacked cloud services or subscription offerings unlike QuickBooks and TurboTax, was essentially a dead end for the company.
Intuit is now banking on QuickBooks, a cloud-based accounting software.
5. Satya Nadella
Position: CEO of Microsoft.
The rating of the most successful businessmen could not do without a Microsoft representative. He became CEO in 2014 and is an excellent leader, according to Steve Ballmer.Under Nadella's leadership, the corporation has invested billions of dollars in building data centers around the world to support cloud products. And this has allowed the business to move from permanent licenses, where income is a one-off affair, to subscriptions, where income is regular.
4. Larry Page
Position: CEO of Alphabet.
Alphabet is the parent company of Google and several others:
- Nest: is dedicated to improving living space;
- Google Fiber: implements broadband Internet access using fiber-optic communication;
- Verily: studies life sciences.
In 2015, these companies collectively generated revenues of $ 448 million.
3. Mary Dillon
Position: CEO of Ulta.
The only lady in the top ten most successful business people in 2016. She took over as CEO in mid-2013 and has doubled the company's sales. Ulta is now the largest cosmetic retailer in the United States.
2. Jeff Bezos
Position: CEO of Amazon.
The largest online retailer has generated $ 2.1 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, thanks in large part to its growing cloud business. At the same time, Amazon is making headway in the home automation market with its Amazon Echo smart speaker. And its line of inexpensive Fire tablets is well-deserved for its quality, lightness and good screens.
1. Mark Zuckerberg
Position: CEO of Facebook.
The most successful entrepreneur and the best businessman of the year, known even to those who have never used the facebook. Facebook is worth $ 350 billion and has an audience of nearly 1.8 billion. And Zuckerberg remained chief executive officer for 12 years on Facebook's journey to greatness. Thanks to bold acquisitions and forward-looking moves, he saved his brainchild from being "drowned" by competitors such as Google, Twitter, Snapchat and others.