The financial crisis grounded many a high flying corporate honchos while those still standing, including Citi's Vikram Pandit and JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon have created the worst business.
Going by a list of 10 'Best and Worst CEO Buzz of 2009' compiled by Fortune, Apple's iconic Chairman and CEO Steve Jobs is on top with the best business this year.
Apart from Pandit and Dimon, others named to create the worst business are Merrill Lynch's former Chief John Thain, AIG's former Chairman and Chief Edward Liddy and Goldman Sachs' Chairman and Chief Lloyd Blankfein.
On the league of CEOs who created the best buzz, Jobs is in line with Yahoo!'s Carol Bartz, Starbuck's Howard Schultz, Google's Eric Schmidt and former Chief of General Motors Fritz Henderson.
According to the magazine, the list is based on a "statistical analysis of blogosphere chatter to discover which Chief of Fortune 500 companies garnered the most buzz this year, good and bad".
Data is from digital marketing agency Zeta interactive. The entity tracks online media -- including millions of blogs, message boards, and social media posts -- and uses algorithms to measure both volume and tone of conversations about a given subject (here -- CEOs of Fortune 500 firms).
On Pandit, the report said that he has done little to endear himself to shareholders, employees, and the government after Citi received $45 million in federal bailout money.
"Early in the year, Pandit tried to make amends by asking for a $1 salary until the company returned to profitability.
"A month later he claimed Citi was profitable in the first two months of the year. But when better-than-expected first-quarter results were reported in April, observers warned that the numbers were padded," the magazine noted.
As per the report, Jobs had 93 per cent positive rating "the percentage of comments about him that are deemed positive in tone".
Fortune pointed out that even though speculation about Jobs' ongoing health problems fuelled much of the conversation, he was also widely praised, with words "genius" and "inspirational" as two of the most common descriptors.
"With a market valuation pushing $190 billion, a 73 per cent share of the US MP3-player market, and 33 million iPhones sold, Apple and its cult-of-personality CEO provide plenty to talk about," it added.
