Who were the worst CEOs of 2008? The list of worst CEOs depends on who you ask, and when.
Early Predictions
What a difference a year makes. Herb Greenberg of MarketWatch published his list at the beginning of 2008 of CEOs on the hot seat. Greenberg identified CEOs whose poor performance in 2007 should have put their jobs at risk in 2008. His list of sub-par CEOs:
- Philip Schoonover of Circuit City Stores
- Steve Odland, CEO of Office Depot
- Aylwin Lewis, CEO of Sears Holdings
- Albert Lord, CEO of SLM
- Pat Russo of Alcatel-Lucent
- Jim Tobin of Boston Scientific
Yet 2008 was such a dismal year there were enough other CEOs to take the "honors" as worst CEO of 2008 that none of Greenberg's predictions made the list.
2008 Lists
"The CEOs who exhibited the worst kinds of unbridled greed and a lack of compassion or concern for others over the last year" were recently named by Co-op America as the Worst CEOs of 2008.
Tops on the list prepared by Co-op America, in conjunction with its Responsible Shopper program, are:
- Charles Prince, former CEO, Citigroup
- John J. Harris, chairman and CEO, Nestle Waters
- Bruce Williamson, CEO, Dynegy
- Rick Wagoner, chairman and CEO, General Motors
With the worldwide financial industry in a mess, its CEOs are singled out for special recognition. The readers of Entrepreneur Limited were polled for the World's Worst Financial Markets CEO. They chose, in rank order:
- Stan O'Neal, former CEO, Merrill Lynch
- Richard Fuld, former CEO, Lehman Brothers
- Sir Fred Goodwin, former CEO, Royal Bank of Scotland
- Chuck Prince, former CEO, Citi
- Ken Thompson, former CEO, Wachovia
Interestingly, all five are "former" CEOs already.
The Free Enterprise Action Fund, a shareholder activist mutual fund, picked a different group of "worst CEOs" based on different criteria in their Five Worst Non-Financial-Crisis-Related CEOs of 2008. They chose:
- Jeff Immelt of General Electric
- Bob Iger of the Walt Disney Company
- Jim Rogers of Duke Energy
- Jim Mulva of ConocoPhillips
- Andrew Liveris of Dow Chemical
Worst CEO of 2008
There are so many to choose from. Pick your own choice for the title of Worst CEO of 2008Best CEO of 2008
I prefer to look on the positive side of this issue, however. There are a lot of good, solid, hard-working CEOs out there who do a good job day in and day out. They just don't get the press coverage.Among the good CEOs who do get press coverage, there are several contenders for Best CEO of 2008. The AOL article Best & Worst in Money 2008: Best CEO for troubled times mentions Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com Inc., Kenneth Lewis, CEO of Bank of America Corp., and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Chief Executive Lee Scott as "other CEOs who deserve respect". But they gave the nod to Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, as their choice for Best CEO of 2008.
My personal choice for Best CEO of 2008 is still Jim Sinegal of Costco. He runs the kind of company that is equally admired by stockholders and by employees - a hard task for anyone.
