Businessperson of the Year

businessperson of the year

It has been a year of tumult—from volatile markets to viral outbreaks to a striking return to Cold War politics. But throughout all this disruption, our top candidates for Fortune’s annual CEO award kept a steady hand on the tiller—and took their companies full speed ahead.

What do you do after you’ve built the Internet’s most profitable franchise? If you’re <a style="color:#ff0000;" href="http://fortune.com/2014/11/13/googles-larry-page-the-most-ambitious-ceo-in-the-universe/">Larry Page, you aim far higher</a>. Revolutionize transportation? Check. Upend medicine? Check. Nearly four years into his tenure, Page has shown himself to be the world’s most daring CEO. His fabled “moonshots” now launch with regularity. Any one of them could change the lives of billions and help Google to remain at the top of the technology heap for generations. Improbably, Page has built his factory of the future while keeping Google’s multi-billion dollar business humming and positioning the company for a dominant role in the era of wearables and Internet-connected cars and homes. In a world where only the paranoid survive, Page has redefined paranoia into unbounded ambition. —Miguel Helft

Larry Page

Replacing a legend is an exercise filled with peril. Yet three years into his stewardship of Steve Jobs’ company, it is becoming increasingly clear that Tim Cook knows what he’s doing as CEO of Apple. The company’s stock is at an all-time high. Booming sales of larger iPhones and renewed enthusiasm for Mac computers are making up for slowing growth in iPads. The coming Apple Watch and the already released Apple Pay service show that Apple remains an innovator—even under a CEO known more for operational prowess than product savvy. Cook has replenished the management ranks at the top of Apple with relatively little rancor. The company remains secretive but has a whiff of openness. And with the purchase of the Beats headphone and streaming-music offering, Apple is reversing Jobs’ abhorrence for high-priced M&amp;A deals. The low-profile Cook even stole the spotlight by matter-of-factly becoming the first openly gay CEO in the Fortune 500. The light still shines brightly in Apple’s executive suite, even without the legendary impresario who switched it on in the first place. —Adam Lashinsky

Tim Cook

John Martin, a chemist who became Gilead’s CEO in 1996, took some heat this year for a wonder drug that can cure hepatitis C, a disease that afflicts more than 130 million people and kills 350,000 around the world each year. For all its benefits, Gilead’s revolutionary medicine, Sovaldi, drew criticism for its price tag: $84,000—or about $1,000 a pill—in the U.S.  Gilead, which also brings in around $9 billion in annual sales of HIV drugs, says Sovaldi’s price reflects its value. It has certainly boosted Gilead’s health: The company’s stock is up 40% in 2014, and hep-C drug sales, projected to top $11 billion, will double the company’s revenues this year. With Gilead’s competitors well behind, it’s unlikely pricing pressure will bring those numbers down soon. So how did Gilead suddenly get to the top of the pharma heap? Many say Martin’s leadership—and prescient dealmaking—is a big part of the answer. —Erika Fry

John C. Martin

Earlier this year, Chipotle founder and co-CEO Steve Ells called the burrito chain’s fast-food competition “a joke” (see “<a style="color:#ff0000;" href="http://fortune.com/2014/11/12/can-mcdonalds-get-its-mojo-back/">Fallen Arches: Can McDonald's get its mojo back?</a>”). Ells has earned the bragging rights. In the past three years, Chipotle has experienced 20.5% annual sales growth, and its stock has soared by 99%. This year he and co-CEO Monty Moran combated rising beef, avocado, and dairy costs in the second quarter by increasing menu prices by 6.5%. Higher prices didn’t dissuade consumers. In fact, same-store sales grew 19.8% in the third quarter, and overall sales are up by 23% for the latest 12 months (though the company has warned of slowing sales growth next year). Analysts attribute Chipotle’s pricing power to its quality food and service and its affluent customer base. —Claire Zillman

Steve Ells and Montgomery Moran

A 2011 spinoff that shed its water and military-technology units shaped ITT into its current form: a manufacturer of specialty components for the energy, transportation, and industrial markets. Denise Ramos, who assumed the CEO job during the split, has proved that ITT can be a profitable company on its own. In the past 12 months, the company has reported sales growth of almost 14% and its shares have increased by 10%. The firm’s brightest spots? Automotive brake pads in Europe, a growing market share in China, and oil and gas project pumps in North America, Latin America, and the Middle East. —C.Z.

Denise Ramos

In October, Walt Disney announced it would keep Bob Iger in the top job through 2018, two years later than planned. Under the former weather­man’s leadership, Disney has delivered a total shareholder return of over 300%. Iger has ushered in a resurgence of creativity at the media ­company, successfully integrated acquisitions like Pixar, Marvel Entertainment, and Lucasfilm, and made bold bets on technologies like digital distribution. While its media networks division (which includes ABC and ESPN) is still Disney’s biggest moneymaker, its smaller film business helped rake in a record $48.8 billion in total revenue in fiscal 2014, up 8% from the year before. Frozen, the highest-grossing animated film in history, will most likely continue to make a mint via merchandise and international expansion—it was the biggest contributor to the $7.3 billion in revenue made by the company’s film division in fiscal 2014, up 22% from the year before. And other projects are in the works, including a fourth Toy Story movie, the next installment in the Star Wars series, a total of 11 Marvel films, and the opening of Disney’s first theme park in China. —Michal Lev-Ram

Bob Iger

When Ken Hicks retires in December, he’ll be leaving Foot Locker at the top of his game. Since he became CEO in 2009, the company’s stock has quintupled and sales have soared. Foot Locker, a once-struggling shoe chain, has become a rare and improbable mall star. The company is on track to complete its third year of record revenue (roughly $7 billion in 2014). Brisk basketball- and running-shoe sales have helped. Hicks has also played America’s fitness craze masterfully, making well-timed pushes in apparel and the children’s and women’s business. And he’s spruced up stores with new displays and mannequins. Hicks’s successor, COO Richard Johnson, has some big shoes to fill. —E.F.

Ken Hicks

Ulta was already a fast-growing company when former U.S. Cellular CEO Mary Dillon took the helm in July 2013. But Dillon has not been content to ride Ulta’s growth. In September she laid out an ambitious five-year plan to open 500 new stores (nearly doubling the current fleet) by 2019, bring e-commerce to 10% of sales (from 4% now), and reach comparable sales growth of 5% to 7% a year. Ulta has deftly turned itself into a top specialty beauty retailer by outmaneuvering the competition with a simple formula: combining what shoppers can find at retailers like Target and Walgreens with salon services, all under one roof. Ulta shares are up by 28.6% since the beginning of 2014. —Phil Wahba 

Mary Dillon

Much has changed at Biogen since George Scangos, a biology professor turned biotech exec, became CEO in 2010. He quickly narrowed the firm’s focus to a few areas, including neurological drugs like the one that became Tecfidera, the blockbuster multiple-sclerosis medication introduced in 2013. With an impressive safety and efficacy record, the pill’s launch has been “phenomenal,” says Evercore ISI biotech analyst Mark Schoenebaum. It has also helped Biogen corner the $15 billion MS medication market and is the primary reason the firm, which introduced its fifth MS drug in August, is expecting 40% revenue growth in 2014. —E.F.

George Scangos

Did anyone in the world have a bigger September than Jack Ma? Alibaba’s IPO catapulted Ma into first place on China’s rich list, and the news extravaganza made the tech executive a global household name. Meanwhile, Alibaba’s business seems as strong as ever. In its first earnings report as a public company in November, the e-commerce giant said that quarterly sales rose 54%, and its active buyers hit a record 307 million. Traders bid up Alibaba’s market value to $260 billion—higher than Wal-Mart’s. —Scott Cendrowski

Jack Ma

During the financial crisis, consumers moved away from fast, costly shipping services and chose slower, cheaper options instead. That trend hit FedEx—and particularly its prodigious Express business segment—hard. Under Fred Smith, the company has addressed that problem more quickly than expected, offering buyouts to 3,600 employees. (Express revenue actually increased by 4%, to $6.9 billion, for the year ended in September.) That effort, along with the release of a new, fuel-efficient air fleet, is expected to help boost profits to the tune of $1.6 billion by the end of 2016. The company plans to hire 50,000 seasonal workers for the upcoming holidays, up from 40,000 a year ago. —C.Z.

Fred Smith

Carol Meyrowitz likes to operate TJX under the radar, but <a style="color:#ff0000;" href="http://fortune.com/2014/07/24/t-j-maxx-the-best-retail-store/">unparalleled success</a> has made it harder for the $27.4 billion off-price powerhouse to escape the limelight. Since 2007, when she assumed the reins of the company behind big value retail chains like HomeGoods, Marshalls, and T.J. Maxx, profits have almost tripled and the stock has returned around 370%, vs. about 65% for the S&amp;P. Meyrowitz, who came up through the ranks as a buyer, has raised the quality of the stores and the brands they carry while also more than doubling the size of her buying team. The next frontier is e-commerce, a major untapped market for the company, which currently makes up only 1% of its sales. She’s not slowing down brick-and-mortar expansion, though: The company thinks it has the potential to increase its store base by about 60%, to 5,150 locations. Despite the size, Meyrowitz is keeping the company nimble. "We are one of the most flexible retailers in the world with a global vendor base that numbers over 16,000, decades of experience in building international teams and infrastructure, and one of the widest customer demographic reaches in our sector," she says. —Beth Kowitt

Carol Meyrowitz

Larry Page may be taking moon shots with Google Glass and self-driving cars, but in 2014, Mark Zuckerberg developed his own taste for the unconventional, orchestrating aggressive acquisitions and experimental product launches. In the first quarter, Facebook paid $2 billion for virtual-reality firm Oculus VR and $19 billion for WhatsApp, a messaging app. Meanwhile, the social network’s Creative Labs unleashed a string of new products: Paper, Slingshot, Mentions, and Rooms. No longer is Facebook playing defense to a bristly Wall Street, as it did in its early days as a publicly traded company. As of early November, shares of Facebook were up by around 37% for the year. —Erin Griffith

Mark Zuckerberg

In a June <a style="color:#ff0000;" href="http://fortune.com/2014/06/12/theranos-blood-holmes/">Fortune cover story</a>, 30-year-old Elizabeth Holmes finally lifted the veil on the secretive, disruptive blood-analytics company she founded in 2003 when she was just 19. The rapidly expanding firm, Theranos, can perform hundreds of diagnostic tests using just a few drops of blood painlessly drawn from a pricked finger—while charging just a quarter to a tenth of what the incumbents do. Holmes still owns over half the stock in Theranos, which investors value at more than $9 billion and which now employs more than 700 people. —Roger Parloff

Elizabeth Holmes

For years, the knock on sports-apparel maker Under Armour was that it couldn’t get footwear right and couldn’t win over women. It has evolved: Women’s apparel is 29% of UA’s total apparel sales, and its growth has outpaced that of men’s. Shoes make up 14% of UA’s sales, and that business is expanding at a feverish clip. Chalk it all up to Kevin Plank’s relentless drive to take on Nike. (He has reportedly refused numerous offers to sell.) UA’s revenue—$2.3 billion in 2013—grew at a rate nearly three times that of what Nike’s did over the past 12 months. Plank has long talked about his company as if it were a person. Now, at 18, Under Armour is all grown up. —Daniel Roberts

Kevin Plank

Shouldn’t Intuit have been disrupted by now? Cloud computing is supposed to spell doom for companies built on selling software that users install. In the white-hot payments industry, mega-players like Apple may want to invade Intuit’s financial-software fortress. Yet Brad Smith is keeping the company ahead of all the changes, buying eight firms this year and moving Intuit’s services into the cloud, around the world, and onto mobile devices (you can now compute and file your taxes from your phone). Investors see a bright future: Intuit stock is hitting all-time highs, making this specialized software company more valuable than Macy’s or Marriott. —Geoff Colvin

Brad Smith

Southwest changed the way Americans travel when it was founded more than four dec­ades ago. Through a combination of hyper-efficiency and a famously relaxed attitude (hot pants, anyone?), it proved that people would choose to fly relatively short distances if the price was right. Now the country’s largest domestic carrier (by passengers) is undergoing a transformation of its own. Under CEO Gary Kelly, Southwest has added dozens of new routes, including its first international ones—and by year’s end, its $1.4 billion coupling with AirTran should be complete. The airline’s stock has soared by more than 100% over the past 12 months, compared with just 15% for the S&amp;P. —Anne VanderMey

Gary Kelly

In 2014, Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, successfully completed two missions to the International Space Station. But it’s at Tesla Motors where he has generated the most voltage. Despite a production problem and a new-model delay, Tesla’s stock continues to soar, shooting its market cap to over $30 billion, even though the company has yet to record an annual profit. Tesla bulls are looking to the future, with the firm’s announcement that it will build a $5 billion lithium-ion battery “gigafactory” in the Nevada desert. <a href="http://fortune.com/inside-elon-musks-billion-dollar-gigafactory/">(See: Inside Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar Gigafactory) </a>The plant is key to Musk’s master plan: to produce an affordable, mass-market electric car by 2017. —Peter Elkind

Elon Musk

Once upon a time, Charles Schwab used to look down on offering customers financial advice. But under Bettinger, who became CEO during the onset of the financial crisis in October 2008, fee-based advice and wealth management have become a cornerstone of the firm’s business. Schwab’s financial advisory business has proved to be a major driver of client assets—they’ve doubled under Bettinger’s six years at the helm. Shares of the company have increased by 20% over the 12 months since November 2013. —C.Z.

Walt Bettinger

In 2000, Williams-Sonoma’s anemic online sales made for a case study in how not to approach the web. Today, under CEO Laura Alber, the home goods giant is one of the country’s biggest e-tailers. Williams-Sonoma does roughly half of its nearly $5 billion in annual sales online, helped along—somewhat ­improbably—by its buzzy brick-and-mortar business. Alber has promoted in-store events, like book signings and panini-making classes, and this year will add 11 stores to the company’s fast-growing West Elm brand, which has racked up double-digit growth since Alber became the boss in 2010. The company’s stock has soared by 235% over the past five years. —A.V.

Laura Alber

The year started a little rocky for Lundgren, who announced that Macy’s would lay off 2,500 workers in January. But the move saved the company $100 million as it increased its focus to online shopping. Lundgren refers to Macy’s as the 10th largest online company in the world, although it continues to face challenges from Amazon and other online retailers. But this year, the department store chain finalized a plan to turn all full-size Macy’s locations into fulfillment centers for online shoppers. And, amid expectations of a big holiday season, the Cincinnati, Ohio-based retailer announced it would hire 86,000 seasonal workers, up 3.6% from last year. —Ryan Derousseau

Terry Lundgren

The Home Shopping Network, now HSNi, launched 37 years ago as a radio station that sold can openers on air. When Grossman took charge in 2006, it was a cable channel that seemed hardly more relevant—the poor, dowdy sister of its main competitor QVC. Grossman, a Ralph Lauren and Nike alum, who took the company public in 2008 has since given HSNi a trajectory that few thought possible in the age of Amazon and in the midst of a slow economy. The company’s stock has quadrupled in the past five years (up 12% this year) and sales are growing—largely due to smart moves she has made to lure customers to HSNi’s mobile and digital platforms. For the busy, affluent mom-on-the go, there’s a carefully curated selection of goods and the HSN Arcade (win discounts!). No longer the realm of dimming stars and D-listers, Grossman has also brought in celebs like Keith Urban and struck partnerships with buzzy companies like Disney to peddle wares. It’s little surprise that Grossman has become a hot commodity herself these days. She has been reportedly sought out for top jobs at J.C. Penney and Target this year. —E.F.

Mindy Grossman

With less than two months left in Blake’s nearly eight-year tenure as CEO, Home Depot announced that a security hack left 56 million customer credit and debit cards at risk. It was among the <a style="color:#ff0000;" href="http://fortune.com/2014/10/29/home-depot-cybersecurity-reputation-frank-blake/">largest hacks in U.S. retail history</a>. Instead of laying low during his last days—he had already planned to step down as CEO in November 2014—Blake took the lead in responding to the crisis. Customers were provided free credit monitoring and Home Depot rented a call center that can handle 50,000 inquiries a day. The total cost of the breach has reached $62 million to date, but Blake has been praised for his efforts. —R.D.

Frank Blake

Rothblatt always seems to think big. After all, she launched United Therapeutics to find a cure for pulmonary arterial hypertension, which restricts blood flow from the heart to the lungs. Rothblatt’s daughter suffered from the life-threatening disease. This year, she teamed up with Synthetic Genomics to develop genetically modified organs in pigs for the purpose of human transplants. She was also the highest paid female and transgender (she was born Martin Rothblott) CEO in America, cashing in over $38 million last year. What may stand out the most was a revelation from a profile in New York Magazine that she is developing a robot that will contain the memories and personality of her wife, Bina. Big thinking may be an understatement. —R.D.

Martine Rothblatt

Two years ago, Fortune made Bezos Businessperson of the Year, and for good reason: Amazon dominated e-commerce, the book industry, and web services. But 2014 has not been especially kind to the online retail giant. Amazon Web Services growth slowed over the summer. The company also invoked controversy when it instigated a pricing squabble with book publisher Hachette. And its first smartphone bombed. Investors are concerned: the company’s stock is down 26% from its all-time high. 
 
Still, Amazon continues to see robust revenue growth, pouring much of its cash into smart bets for the future. Earlier this year, it purchased the popular video game streaming site Twitch for $1.1 billion. Amazon spent over $100 million during its third quarter on original video content, such as the critically acclaimed original TV series "Transparent" with "Arrested Development" actor Jeffrey Tambor. —JP Mangalindan

Jeff Bezos

It’s not often that men will break the bank for shoes. But Nike’s Parker has managed to grow the world’s largest athletic gear company and up the 40-year-old brand’s cool factor by pumping out innovative designs, incorporating new social media tech, and launching exclusive artist collaborations (a sneaker co-designed by Kanye West sold on eBay for $90,300). Parker, who was a track all-star at Penn State University and started at Nike as a designer, has roughly doubled the company’s sales since he took over as CEO in 2006. This fall, he launched a new line for women, a category he says will add another $2 billion in sales by the end of 2017. —A.V.

Mark Parker

It’s difficult to follow a year like 2013, when GrubHub merged with its main competition, Seamless. But Maloney found a way, ushering the online food ordering sites into a $192 million IPO. While it didn’t receive the same buzz as Alibaba, GrubHub’s share price jumped from $34 in April to over $45 by mid August. Investors were rewarded, as revenue increased 105% over the past three quarters compared to last year, in part because of improvements to the sites’ ordering platforms. Another great year for the young CEO, and you would have to call it a streak. —R.D.

Matt Maloney

Sometimes it’s about being in the right place at the right time. For MasterCard, that very well could come in the form of Apple Pay, which may finally break the barrier between consumers and mobile payment. MasterCard and Banga could benefit from <a style="color:#ff0000;" href="http://fortune.com/2014/07/24/mastercard-tech-company/">increased transactions using mobile phones</a>. But the CEO isn’t letting MasterCard rest on its laurels, as the company continues its efforts to expand in China and other parts of Asia. MasterCard’s presence in the region grew by 15% through three quarters of 2014, compared to 2013, at a time when Asian economies have begun to show some signs of weakness. —R.D.

Ajay Singh Banga

The skies have been friendly to Delta and its CEO Richard Anderson. The company’s stock price is up by 55% so far in 2014, gas prices continue to fall, U.S. spending is increasing, and even an Ebola scare didn’t ground the airline. Despite replacing part of its fleet with new airplanes, Delta expects record profits of $4 billion by the end of the year. Anderson even went as far to promise 3-4% raises for many of its service employees in 2015. —R.D.

Richard Anderson

The company known for Post-it notes has had a strange 2014. Not much has gone wrong for the St. Paul, Minn. conglomerate, but until mid October, shares had fallen 5%. Thulin didn’t blink an eye, keeping the company’s focus on research and development, including areas like nanotechnology, which has been applied to industries like health care, renewable energy, and other industrial purposes. Shareholders have rewarded Thulin for staying the course, and 3M’s stock jumped 18% in less than a month. —R.D.

Inge Thulin

Normally, if you dump a $2 billion business, investors shake their heads in disapproval, perhaps even disbelief. But in October, when CVS removed tobacco products from its shelves, it mostly met applause. Merlo said he couldn’t justify selling customers health care services in one hand, while stocking cigarettes from the other. The move also signaled the firm’s continued focus on managing pharmacy benefits. Along those lines, Merlo announced that CVS would expand its line of “Minute Clinics,” or walk-in health clinics, from 800 locations to 1,500 by 2017. His efforts have been enriching: In a PayScale survey, Merlo was listed as the highest paid CEO compared to the average pay of his employees among Fortune 100 companies, at a ratio of 422-to-1. —R.D.

Larry Merlo

It was a year of focus for Rodriguez and ADP. In October, ADP finalized the spinoff of CDK Global, its $2 billion retail and digital marketing business that serves auto dealers and manufacturers. The auto industry and CDK services didn’t fit with ADP’s prime business, which is human resources and billing management tools. Investors seemed to welcome the newfound focus. ADP stock has increased by 15% since the spin. —R.D.

Carlos Rodriguez

The son of a grocer from a small Canadian fishing village has become a health food titan in the U.S.—more than doubling annual sales in the last five years, to $2.2 billion for fiscal 2014, and with plans to add another billion over the next three. Founded in 1993, Simon has made dozens of acquisitions, growing the company’s slate of brands, like Celestial Seasonings, BluePrint juices, and Terra Chips into Whole Foods’ largest supplier (retailers like Wal-Mart also buy Hain’s organic wares). Investors can taste the returns: Despite fierce competition, Hain’s stock price has rocketed by over 450% in the last five years. —A.V.

Irwin Simon

Buffett’s year started out with a ball. Or a bet on a ballgame, if you will. He announced that he would back Quicken Loans’ $1 billion payout for anyone that filled out a perfect NCAA tournament basketball bracket. The odds were 9.2 quintillion-to-one that someone would actually succeed. No one did. But Berkshire Hathaway and Quicken Loans got plenty of publicity. Otherwise, it was business as usual for the Oracle. He helped fund Burger King’s purchase of Canadian doughnut chain Tim Hortons while Berkshire Class A shares surpassed $200,000 for the first time. —R.D.

Warren Buffett

The “Undercover Boss” TV star has taken a lot of heat for agreeing to a $48.5 billion merger between DirecTV and AT&amp;T in May. A proposed class action lawsuit claimed that White is selling the satellite TV provider on the cheap, while the U.S. Senate’s antitrust panel expressed concerns that the deal could have a negative effect on consumers. Still, if approved, the alliance will make White an architect of America's second-largest pay TV operator (after the proposed Comcast-Time Warner merger in February), serving 26 million customers. Investors, meanwhile, have primarily cheered the direction the satellite TV provider is taking. DirecTV shares are up by 26% since the start of 2014. —Jeroen Ansink

Michael White

Coming off of one of Alaska Airline’s best years yet, CEO Brad Tilden has spent almost $1 billion to purchase 10 Boeing jets. While relations with partner Delta have soured on the back of the major carrier’s expansion into some of Alaska's key bases, the sky is still the limit for Tilden, whose firm reported a 27% increase in third quarter profits to a record $200 million. Besides capitalizing on lower gas prices, increased fuel efficiency, and growing demand, the 82-year-old airline is putting itself at the forefront of air travel innovation: Tilden is currently mulling the institution of an “e-thumb” system at Alaska Air, using passengers’ fingerprints to replace tickets, credit cards, and IDs. —J.A.

Brad Tilden

After scoring big with original programming hits such as “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black,” Netflix seems to have become a victim of its own success. Growing pains in Europe and lower than expected growth in a crowded market culminated in a 26% share price drop in October. Competition is heating up, too, with HBO announcing that its own streaming service will soon become a standalone option for customers. Co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings is not one to give up without a fight, though. After all, he transformed what was a DVD mail-order rental service into a content streaming powerhouse starting in 2007, a move that has paid off handsomely. Now, it’s all about keeping pace. Netflix announced that it will stream all 10 seasons of “Friends” come January, which will surely please binge watchers. —J.A.

Reed Hastings

In his first year as CEO, Satya Nadella introduced a humbler, leaner, and, dare we say it, hipper Microsoft. Nadella, who took the helm from the notoriously outspoken Steve Ballmer last February, has initiated a complete strategic overhaul at the software giant. His “cloud-first” approach, embodied in Microsoft's own cloud platform Azure, is well on its way to become a $4 billion a year player, big enough to take market leaders Salesforce.com and Amazon head on. —J.A.

Satya Nadella

With projected 45% year-over-year growth to $2.3 billion in fourth quarter revenue, China’s Google equivalent Baidu is continuing to cash in on the nation’s more than 500 million mobile Internet users. It has not limited itself to the virtual world, either. With Baidu Connect, billionaire Co-founder and CEO Robin Li is heavily investing in connecting smartphones with brick-and-mortar stores, posing a direct challenge to China’s Internet superstore Alibaba. By taking a controlling stake in online daily deals site Peixe Urbano, Baidu has also strengthened its foothold in Brazil. —J.A.

Robin Li

Echoing the stock market's remarkable run, the only way for Omaha-based TD Ameritrade seems to be up. Fourth quarter net income at America's largest discount broker by client trades grew by 5.5% to $211 million. In a world of virtual trading, CEO Fred Tomczyk is still keeping things human. He says that he has no intention to follow Charles Schwab's strategy to offer a free “robo-advice” service, claiming a combination of automated investing with human advice is the surest way to success. Investors seem to agree: TD Ameritrade shares have gained around 25% in the last 12 months. —J.A.

Fred Tomczyk

Luxury cosmetics maker Estée Lauder is handily beating its competition, including L’Oréal and Elizabeth Arden, thanks to its broad portfolio of products and geographic markets, which has protected it against any single region’s weakness. Under Fabrizio Freda, Estée Lauder has established itself deep inside China, gaining a first-mover advantage in the region. He has also ramped up R&amp;D spending at the company, giving Estée Lauder an edge in the skin care market, the most competitive and lucrative in the beauty sector. Also on his watch, the company has finally begun to fix a business that had been stumbling for years: fragrance, which is now growing by leaps and bounds. Freda, who has been CEO since 2009, has presided over a nearly 50% rise in revenue and has managed to grow an old, family-owned business. —Phil Wahba

Fabrizio Freda

A luxury car deserves a luxury sound system, and Dinesh Paliwal’s Harman International delivers precisely that. Leading Harman since 2007, Paliwal has overseen the development of Clari-Fi, a technology that restores the nuances that get lost when music is digitally compressed. Strong demand from clients like Ferrari, BMW, Audi, and Chrysler has turned Harman into a Wall Street darling, beating analysts' earnings estimates seven quarters in a row. Business is so good that Paliwal recently announced a $500 million share buy-back over the next three years. —J.A.

Dinesh C. Paliwal

America's growing hunger for protein has whetted Jeffrey Ettinger's appetite as well. In June, Hormel Foods agreed to buy CytoSport for $450 million, adding Muscle Milk and 100% Whey protein powder to its stable of brands, which include Spam, Dinty Moore stew, and other processed meat labels. Ettinger's acquisition is part of a larger diversification effort at Hormel. Last year, the company bought Skippy peanut butter from Unilever for about $700 million. —J.A.

Jeffrey Ettinger

No other startup has transformed homeowners into micro-entrepreneurs quite like Brian Chesky's Airbnb. While it prepares for an employee stock sale, the wildly popular online rental site is set to garner a valuation of $13 billion. The 33-year old Chesky, who shares the No. 1 spot with Uber founder Travis Kalanick on <a style="color:#ff0000;" href="fortune.com/40-under-40/">Fortune's 40 under 40 list</a> this year, still has some legal hurdles to overcome. New York City has announced a crackdown on local listings, citing that more than 70% violate local hotel laws. On the bright side, the city of San Francisco has recently passed an initial bill that would regulate and legitimize Airbnb. —J.A.

Brian Chesky

After growing Allergan from a small eye care outfit to a pharmaceutical superstar, CEO David Pyott is in the fight of his career. A $55 billion hostile takeover bid from Canada-based competitor Valeant and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has turned into an ugly battle. A recent overture from a potential white knight may save the Botox maker from Valeant's advances after all. Pyott and Allergan have kept up the fight and continue to post strong results. The firm’s earnings for the third quarter of 2014 surpassed analyst expectations and sales grew by 17% compared to the previous year. During his 16 years at the helm, Pyott has increased the company’s market cap by $50 billion to a healthy $58 billion, a stellar performance that has put him at the top of the heap among CEOs worldwide. —J.A.

David Pyott

Tencent saw its stock price drop sharply in the wake of Alibaba's spectacular $25 billion IPO, shaving off a considerable amount of co-founder's Pony Ma's $13 billion estimated net worth. Even with the dip, Tencent’s stock is still up by 55% over the past 12 months. After all, with QQ Messenger, Qzone and WeChat, the Chinese holding company, whose activities also include online games and e-commerce, still owns three of the world’s five biggest social networks, serving almost 2 billion active users combined. 
 
Furthermore, by pushing into online banking and online-to-offline retail, Pony Ma is gearing up to hit Alibaba where it hurts. And in an effort to lock in its position as one of the world’s largest Internet companies (it’s currently No. 5), Tencent is teaming up with IBM to offer cloud-computing services for corporate customers. —J.A.

Pony Ma

Life could be worse than disappointing Wall Street with 10% sales growth in a saturated market. Still, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz took out the big guns to ease analysts' concerns over its fourth quarter performance. For next year, the coffee giant plans to offer home delivery in key markets through a mobile ordering and payment app. Adding to Starbucks’ “e-commerce on steroids” strategy, Schultz plans to double the company’s business in Japan and triple it in China. —J.A.

Howard Schultz

Ridding the city of London of a million cars is just one of the many goals Travis Kalanick has set for himself. As co-founder of taxi app Uber, the 38-year old has been connecting millions of passengers with drivers, decreasing traffic congestion, and boosting the value of his five- year-old startup to a whopping $18 billion. Kalanick's ride has come with a few bumps in the road. Competition is heating up, and to operate without a license under local law, Uber recently had to slash its fees from 1.60 euros to 35 euro cents per kilometer in Germany. —J.A.

Travis Kalanick

Whether you’re skydiving, surfing in the Pacific, or playing with your children in the park, GoPro is the ultimate camera to record the affair. Founder Nick Woodman spent 12 years perfecting his wearable and durable camcorders, culminating in a $427 million IPO in June that valued the company at $3 billion. GoPro's market cap has since more than tripled, although shares took a 20% hit after a reporter speculated that the injuries endured by Formula One driver Michael Schumacher during a skiing accident were worsened by a head-mounted GoPro camera. The allegation doesn't seem to have hurt business, though: for the fourth quarter, GoPro expects revenues of $550 million to $580 million, well above average analyst estimates of $503 million. —J.A.

Nick Woodman

More than 70% of Colgate’s sales come from outside North America, so volatile currencies, like what we have seen in Venezuela, can wreak havoc on the company’s margins. Despite those swings, Colgate has had a pretty calm year. For Cook, an admitted introvert, this relative lack of drama allowed him to let his company’s oral and dental care products—staples around the world—do the talking. In the meantime, Cook has continued the $1.1 billion restructuring plan he announced in 2012 to reduce costs—including laying off 2,300 employees over four years—and rely more on analytics to guide future business moves. The effort is expected to save Colgate between $365 million and $435 million annually by 2016. —R.D.