Two India-origin persons — Indra Nooyi and Shantanu Narayen — have been named among the top 25 CEOs in the US, who kept their companies on the success path despite challenging economic conditions, according to Forbes magazine.
Adobe System CEO Shantanu Narayen and beverage major PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi have been ranked at the 16th and 17th places respectively in the list of 25 ‘top gun CEOs’ for 2009 who kept their firms thriving amid the recessionary situation.
“This past year has given top executives many reasons to be nervous about whether their firms will stay alive, let alone turn a profit. But some executives did more than just get through hard times and some put their companies on the path to success,” Forbes said.
The list is topped by business solutions provider Automatic Data Process’s Gary C Butler and the magazine said he was “extremely strong at strategic planning and overall execution”.
About Nooyi, the magazine said, she had the right long-term strategic vision and had executed very well.
“PepsiCo dominates the markets it operates in. She runs the business carefully, in good times and bad. I like how she thinks about managing the business,” the Forbes article said.
About Narayen, Forbes said he had been in the industry for a very long time and “always has a strong sense of what the next key steps are in terms of positioning the company”.
The list also includes Hewlett-Packard’s Mark V Hurd, Walt Disney Co’s Robert A Iger and Procter & Gamble’s Alan G Lafley among the top 25.
The Forbes report said an advisory agency, Brendan Wood International, had ranked the top 25 chief executive officers for 2009 based on their ability to make smart acquisitions, make themselves visible and expand the company’s value propositions, among other things.
Investors can make better long-term investment decisions depending on their confidence in the company’s CEO and management team, Brendan Wood said.
About 317 US companies were reviewed by 2,500 asset managers to determine the ‘Top Guns’. CEOs were ranked quantitatively and qualitatively with data from this past year.
The magazine said only three of this year’s top executives had made to the list previously. They are Andrew Gould of Schlumberger, Nicholas Chabraja of General Dynamics and Mark Hurd of Hewlett-Packard.
