Have you ever wondered what makes the most powerful businessmen and women tick? How did they get to where they are? When you think of the likes of Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, can you see any similarities between them?
Here at BusinessComparison, we’ve taken a look at some of the biggest brands in their world to get an insight into their CEOs and what sets them apart from the crowd. We wanted to see whether they had any similar characteristics that helped them on their way to success.
Take a look at our findings and who knows, maybe you’ll see something of yourself in these CEO secrets!
In a world where both boardroom diversity and the gender pay gap are common topics of controversy, we wanted to understand what the split between male and female CEOs looks like at the world’s most popular brands.
We found that a whopping 46 of the CEOs we looked at were male, with just four female CEOs. These female bosses were Kylie Cosmetics’ Kylie Jenner, Huda Beauty’s Huda Kattan, ITV’s Carolyn McCall, and Yves Saint Laurent’s Francesca Bellettini.
This is quite a dramatic split with women only accounting for 8% of the CEOs. Sectors such as technology and automotive don’t feature a single female CEO leading the companies we looked at. Men, on the other hand, head up companies in every sector on our list.
KEY:
We might hear plenty of negative news stories about the generation of millennials, but they seem to be leading the way when it comes to founding companies, with 45% of the founders on our list being part of the millennial generation. In fact, every one of the millennials on our full list have founded their own companies. Baby Boomers, on the other hand, feature the most with 27 CEOs, however, only two of those started their own company.
The average age of the CEOs of the world’s most popular brands is 55. The youngest boss is Kylie Jenner, CEO of Kylie Cosmetics, who is just 22 years old. The oldest boss is Canon CEO, Fujio Mitarai, who is 84.
Age may just be a number, but for these CEOs, it provides an insight into how they got to where they are today, with them coming from a number of different generational groups.
The most common star sign is Taurus, with Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and BBC CEO, Tim Davie two of the eight Taurus CEOs. Taurus signs are thought to be reliable, stubborn, ambitious, practical and patient. These sound like the perfect traits of a successful CEO!
The United States is one of the main business hubs in the world, and with 36% of the CEOs on our list hailing from the States, it’s clear that American businessmen and women are finding plenty of success. A further 10% of the CEOs are Japanese, with 8% British and 8% Italian.
Technology is the most popular sector for the American CEOs, with six of the 18 bosses working in this industry. For Japanese CEOs, Automotive was the most common sector with two out of five heading these companies. British CEOs favour the entertainment industry with two out of four working for the two largest British broadcasters, whereas half of the Italian CEOs worked in the fashion industry.
KEY:
What does it take to make a CEO? Well, in most cases, it involves a prestigious university. Six of the CEOs attended Harvard University, including Mark Zuckerberg and Adidas boss, Kasper Rørsted. A total of eight of the bosses attended Ivy League schools with Jeff Bezos being a Princeton alumnus and Google’s Sundar Pichai having studied at Wharton Scool of the University of Pennsylvania.
A total of three CEOs dropped out of university, all of which founded their own companies. These are Spotify’s Daniel Ek, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Oracle’s Larry Ellison. Clearly, being a college dropout didn’t stand in the way of their success!
However, an Ivy League education isn’t for everyone as Kylie Jenner proves with her High School Diploma which is her highest level of education, something that didn’t hold her back from becoming our youngest CEO.
Have you ever dreamt of founding your own business? If so, you might want to pay attention to these 11 CEOs who founded their own companies. Technology is the most popular sector, accounting for six of the 11 companies.
Half of the women on the complete list also appear on our founders list, with Kylie Jenner and Huda Kattan both having founded their own beauty brands.
The founders tend to achieve CEO status much earlier in life than those who did not found their companies, with the average age they became the boss at being 28, compared to 45 for those who aren’t founders.
SECTOR KEY:
For many CEOs, getting to the position they are in took many years of work in their company, working their way up to the top, with the average number of years served in a company before getting the top job being 11 years.
However, nine of the bosses joined the company after being appointed CEO, coming into the company as an outsider to take the helm.
Canon’s head, Fujio Mitarai took the longest time to work his way up, having started with the company in 1961 as a training accountant. After 34 years of hard work, he was appointed CEO.
SECTOR KEY:
The average age at which these bosses first gained the title of CEO is 41. The youngest was Kylie Jenner who became a CEO at just 18 years old, with the oldest being the Chanel CEO, Alain Wertheimer who didn’t become a CEO until he was 67.
It is most common for the bosses to get their first CEO title at the ages of 46 and 51, with four CEOs for each age. These include Satya Nadella of Microsoft who became a CEO at 46 and Mark Parker from Nike who became a CEO at 51.
SECTOR KEY:
While success in the boardroom is largely dictated by the business sense of the individual, it’s possible that social following has a part to play for some of our CEOs.
Our most-followed CEOs are Kylie Jenner with 203,850,035 followers, Mark Zuckerberg with 122,647,793 and Tim Cook with 11,596,689.
CEOs such as Kylie Jenner and Huda Kattan have gained many of their customers through social media, becoming a brand in themselves, so these platforms have become incredibly valuable.
When we look at the average social following, the women come out on top with an average of 53,448,255 followers across three networks, whereas men have an average of 3,229,248 followers on the same networks.
SECTOR KEY:
|
Rank |
CEO name |
Brand name |
Facebook |
Twitter |
Instagram |
Total social |
|---|
All information is correct at the time of research, however, factors such as social following and country of residence are subject to change.
We took our original list from Pilotfish Media’s research on the most influential brands on social media. We then used sources such as Wikipedia, Bloomberg, Forbes and Crunchbase to find out everything from birthdates to when they first became a CEO.
We also took numbers of social followers by looking at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
Brought to you by
