businessperson of the year

How does one choose a Businessperson of the Year? We think you have to start with the basics: Is the top dog delivering results? To answer that question, Fortune’s data guru, Scott DeCarlo, constructed an exacting screen. It parses and ranks companies by 12- and 36-month increases in profits, revenues, and stock performance, and factors in return on capital and debt. (We give the 12-month results more weight to capture who’s killing it today but also include the 36-month figures to eliminate those who had one lucky year.) Then, of course, come the intangibles: Is the CEO influencing business? Taking bold, visionary steps? The list that follows reveal star executives with wildly varying styles and approaches, but one thing in common: They deliver, big-time. By: Scott Cendrowski, Geoff Colvin, Laura Entis, Adam Lashinsky, Clifton Leaf, Michal Lev-Ram, Leena Rao, Jonathan Vanian, Nicholas Varchaver, Phil Wahba, and Jen Wieczner

Mark Zuckerberg has willed into being a global phenomenon. [hotlink]Facebook[/hotlink] is a nearly 16,000-employee media powerhouse worth $350 billion and also an advertising-technology juggernaut on track for annual revenues of $27 billion in 2016 and gaudy profits of $7 billion. Its core product has almost 1.8 billion users, and Zuckerberg has shrewdly assembled a portfolio of properties to buttress Facebook.
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Zuckerberg is rightly recognized for his outsize success. Nevertheless, he is surprisingly underappreciated for his business acumen. Yes, he has delegated the commercial aspects of Facebook to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's polished chief operating officer, a Harvard MBA who is 15 years Zuckerberg's senior. Sandberg's presence has fostered an "adult supervision" narrative familiar to the Valley. But unlike, say, the [hotlink]Google[/hotlink] founders, who turned over the CEO job to Eric Schmidt for a decade before Larry Page stepped back into the position in 2011, Zuckerberg has remained chief executive throughout Facebook's 12-year sprint to greatness. Despite repeated doubts when Facebook missed the shift to smartphones, when Facebook was thought to have botched its IPO, when Facebook was seen as losing its luster with young people Zuckerberg has remained the company's chief product visionary and business strategist. Through bold acquisitions and the articulation of a remarkably constant mission, Zuckerberg has kept Facebook on track in the face of full-frontal assaults from the likes of Google, Twitter, Snapchat, and others.
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What makes him so effective as a businessperson? An examination of Zuckerberg's management approach reveals that his success rests on three pillars: his unique ability to look into the future, his otherworldly consistency, and the business discipline he has nurtured in an industry quite often enamored with bright, shiny objects.
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Excerpted from Fortune's cover story, "<a href="http://fortune.com/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-business/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">How to Lead Like Zuck</a>," by Adam Lashinsky.

Mark Zuckerberg

Utter retail domination...and now profits. [hotlink]Amazon[/hotlink] just recorded its sixth consecutive quarter in the black, racking up a cool $2.1 billion in earnings over the past 12 months, largely thanks to its booming cloud business. Meanwhile, Amazon is becoming a hardware force with a hit new gadget and an AI-powered voice assistant in Amazon Echo and Alexa, respectively, and a successful line of low-priced Fire tablets. Not enough for you? Jeff Bezos has also made the company a cultural force in original TV and movies, with the likes of 'Transparent.' Then there are his side projects. Now worth $66 billion, Bezos bought and helped revive the Washington Post, which has been a must-read this presidential election cycle. And his space venture, Blue Origin, has launched four rockets into space. Bezos will be hard-pressed to top all of that in 2017.

Jeff Bezos

A veteran of stints at [hotlink]McDonald's[/hotlink], Gatorade, and U.S. Cellular, Mary Dillon took the helm at fast-expanding Ulta in mid-2013, and all she's done since is double sales and profits, improve margins, and score hefty gains in same-store sales. Dillon has upgraded the company's e-commerce backbone and elevated its product mix. Here's how we put it in a recent profile: Ulta's formula for selling beauty products—put them all under one roof and offer deals, deals, deals—turned the chain into a fast-growing juggernaut, a very rare success story in a gloomy decade for retail. Though it largely eschews posh urban shopping districts, Ulta is now the country's biggest specialized beauty retailer. What it lacks in glamour, it makes up for in concrete results.

Mary Dillon

Corporate structure may not be what makes business legends, but Larry Page's vision of a Berkshire Hathaway-like holding company for what was previously known as [hotlink]Google[/hotlink] has been realized in the past year. Alphabet shares have risen 34% since the reorganization, which separated Google's profit-gushing advertising business, mobile operating system Android, fast-growing cloud business, and video network [hotlink]YouTube[/hotlink] from its moonshots, such as self-driving cars and smart contact lenses. Operations have chugged along, with a 27% quarterly profit increase. Some moonshots have crashed, but one, self-driving cars, is set to become a stand-alone unit within Alphabet. Page even has an equivalent to BezosÍs rocket project: flying cars through a self-funded startup, Zee.Aero.

Larry Page

Since Satya Nadella took charge in early 2014, [hotlink]Microsoft[/hotlink] has been engineering a stunning turnaround. He has taken a company focused on personal computing but showing promise in its enterprise and cloud-computing businesses, and turned that equation on its head. In the past three years Microsoft sheared the $9.4 billion phone business it acquired from [hotlink]Nokia[/hotlink] and sold its Bing mapping-data assets to [hotlink]Uber[/hotlink]. It plowed billions into the construction of data centers around the globe to support its now cloud-ready products. And it made substantial leaps transforming its original software business from permanent licenses, where revenue is a one-time affair, to subscriptions, where revenue is recurring.
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 “Satya is a great leader for Microsoft,” says former CEO Steve Ballmer, who is still the company’s largest individual shareholder. He adds that Nadella “has done a great job improving perceptions of the company in ways that can advance its agenda—with developers, industry participants, and investors.”
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Excerpted from “<a href="http://fortune.com/satya-nadella-microsoft-ceo/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Satya Nadella’s Traveling Revival Show</a>,” by Andrew Nusca.

Satya Nadella

Brad Smith is doing what every CEO of a successful incumbent company must do but few ever achieve: successfully disrupting his business as technology remakes his industry. Intuit this year sold off its original product, Quicken personal-finance software, and is betting big on making its QuickBooks accounting software a cloud-based service. His boldest decision, hotly debated internally, was opening the platform to all apps, including those that compete with Intuit's own offerings, for example in handling small-business payrolls. Through it all, Intuit has remained a regular on our ranking of the Best Companies to Work For. Investors looked past a temporary hit to profits as Intuit transitioned to its new business model and have recently priced the stock near record highs.

Brad Smith

While chip companies like [hotlink]Intel[/hotlink] and [hotlink]Qualcomm[/hotlink] have struggled in recent years, [hotlink]Nvidia[/hotlink] has thrived. Videogamers love what Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) can deliver, and investors like Jen-Hsun Huang's bets on two en vogue technologies: artificial intelligence and virtual reality. It turns out that Nvidia's GPUs are adept at powering a type of AI called deep learning that helps computers find patterns in enormous quantities of data. In August, Nvidia said its data-center business doubled quarterly sales year over year thanks in part to deep learning. And if virtual reality becomes a big business, more consumers may need computers with high-end GPUs to power VR headsets. Optimism about Huang's bets is showing up in the company's stock price, which has more than doubled over the past 12 months.

Jen Hsun Huang

When [hotlink]Uber[/hotlink] swaggered into China a few years ago, it seemed likely to dominate the market, just as it has elsewhere. But the U.S. ride-hailing service collided with Cheng Wei, who merged his smaller alternative with an equally sized local rival to form Didi Chuxing and then used funding from the likes of [hotlink]Apple[/hotlink] and Tencent to wage a costly war of attrition with Uber. Didi offered to give away 1 billion yuan worth of free rides, popped up in 400 cities when Uber was just in a few dozen, and invested in U.S. rival [hotlink]Lyft[/hotlink]. This summer Uber effectively conceded defeat, selling its China unit to Didi. The company, currently valued at $35 billion, hasn't expanded outside China, but it now controls the world's biggest transportation market.

Cheng Wei

Energy drinks are booming, and Rodney Sacks' company is chugging profits. In 1992 he and [hotlink]Hilton[/hotlink] Schlosberg bought a family-owned juice business called Hansen's Natural for $14.6 million. Ten years later they and colleague Mark Hall unveiled a radically different drink: a neon-colored [hotlink]Red Bull[/hotlink] competitor called Monster Energy. Soon Monster was providing a sugar rush of sales, and Sacks doubled down. In 2015 he swapped its natural drinks, which included Peace Tea and various juices, for [hotlink]Coca-Cola[/hotlink] energy brands such as Full Throttle and Relentless. Last year Monster earned a record $546 million in profits on $2.7 billion in revenue. It's now neck and neck with Red Bull in the U.S., and thanks to a distribution deal with [hotlink]Coca-Cola[/hotlink], Monster is poised to caffeinate its sales overseas.

Rodney Sacks

When G-20 leaders met in Hangzhou this year, Jack Ma was there to propose a globally connected e-commerce plan. When George Soros predicted gloom in China's economy, Ma countered with a bullish picture. When the list of the country's top philanthropists was released, Ma topped it. With a merry personality, good English, and a willingness to give speeches almost anywhere, Ma has become the de facto leader of China's business order. Alibaba has as well. After the company spent $1 billion to buy a leading Southeast Asian e-commerce site, Alibaba's business expanded internationally, as it did in all other directions, from media to payments to food delivery. The result: Operating income has risen by a factor of nearly seven since 2012. And Alibaba's stock is up 20% in 2016.

Jack Ma

We all know the knocks on Tim Cook. First, [hotlink]Apple[/hotlink] hasn't released a mind-blowingly innovative new product during his five years as CEO. Second, he isn't Steve Jobs. Fortune thinks different on these points. Cook has kept Apple extravagantly profitable (almost $46 billion in the past year), one reason it's the world's most valuable company, at $600 billion. And innovation does continue in the form of the smartwatch and wireless earphones; it's just not of the magnitude of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Don't undervalue competence either. Apple shipped 212,000 iPhones in the past year, and unlike those of arch-foe Samsung, none of them spontaneously combusted. Oh, and there will only ever be one Steve Jobs. Give Cook a break on that one.

Tim Cook

"Don't let a good crisis go to waste" isn't Mary Barra's motto, but it might as well be. Taking the wheel of the automaker in the wake of its ignition-switch scandal only a few short years after its traumatic and humiliating cycle through bankruptcy, the [hotlink]GM[/hotlink] lifer would have been seen as a success if she had helped the company merely survive. But Barra has done much more, taking decisive actions, such as pulling out of the Russian market and attempting a bit of corporate angioplasty to unclog GM's famously sclerotic culture. The latter is a daunting challenge, but here's one concrete sign of change: Fusty old GM beat Elon Musk's Tesla to market with a budget-priced electric car. And in the meantime Barra has tripled profits, to $13.9 billion, in less than three years as CEO. Sure, the stock price has been stuck in neutral, but Barra has engineered a dramatic, seemingly improbable revival.

Mary Barra

Four years into Reed Hastings's bold bet on original content, [hotlink]Netflix[/hotlink] is reaping some rewards. Recent hits like Stranger Things and Narcos helped bring quarterly streaming revenues up by a third year over year. About 40% of those revenues came from overseas another big push for the CEO and subscriber numbers have risen to 86 million. Netflix's Emmys (nine this year) don't come cheap; the company has said it will budget $6 billion for content next year, including 1,000 hours of original programming. Hastings recently inked some smart partnerships, including an integration with Comcast's X1 platform, which allows customers to stream Netflix via their cable set-top box. The next goal in the company's plan for world domination? Cracking the Chinese market.

Reed Hastings

When Toby Cosgrove told his med school professors he wanted to become a heart surgeon, they scoffed. That was for the A-team, and Cosgrove, due largely to undiagnosed dyslexia, was at the bottom of his class. He ignored them, became a renowned surgeon, and was soon leading the Cleveland Clinic's celebrated cardiac unit. When the hospital made him CEO in 2004, he again had doubters: Too little business experience! Too nice! But under Cosgrove, the hospital—where doctors work on salary so there's no incentive for unnecessary procedures—has enjoyed a stellar reputation and expanded abroad. It has even offered the unthinkable: same-day appointments. Last year 1.3 million patients (nearly everyone who asked) got one. Doubters beware.

Delos "Toby" Cosgrove

What happens when you invent a new business model, upend an industry on multiple continents, raise vast quantities of capital (at an eye-popping valuation of $68 billion), provoke regulators worldwide, and nickel-and-dime your drivers while trying to replace them with robots? If you're Travis Kalanick, people start rooting for you to fail. It certainly looked as if Uber got its comeuppance in China this year, when it sold its business to homegrown rival Didi Chuxing. Maybe so. It was also a shrewd capitulation in that Kalanick who had invested billions of Uber's money and many hours of his life on the China quest gained Didi as an investor and removed a costly distraction. Next step? An initial public offering of Uber shares sometime in 2017.

Travis Kalanick

Wang Jianlin is China's richest man, and he shows no signs of resting on his laurels. Already the world's largest owner of movie theaters, Wanda has expanded aggressively into Hollywood this year, paying $3.5 billion for Legendary Entertainment, then announcing a $1 billion deal to buy Dick Clark Productions. Wang has perfectly played China's evolving economy and politics (years ago relatives of the ruling Politburo were offered cheap stakes in Wanda) and is becoming a global symbol of Chinese business prowess. He's overseeing the company's fourth transformation in its 30 years, moving away from real estate and into consumer services, such as theme parks. That took Wanda to $44 billion in sales last year, roughly the same as Coca-Cola' s, and he claims there's a lot more to come.

Wang Jianlin

If you find T.J. Maxx too extravagant, [hotlink]Ross Stores[/hotlink] just may be the ticket for you--and millions of Americans would agree. Indeed, despite intense competition from the aforementioned Maxx and others, such as [hotlink]Nordstrom[/hotlink] Rack, Ross keeps opening new locations and ticking its same-store sales upward by sticking to its spartan "dress for less" approach to off-price retailing. Ross now has a market cap ($24 billion) twice that of [hotlink]Macy's[/hotlink] despite having half its revenue. The company and its CEO march to their own tune. Barbara Rentler, a company lifer who took the top job 2 years ago, is so press shy that her PR team declines to provide even a photo of her, and she has bucked other trends, not least by declining to launch an online store (which admittedly would be tricky for a company that relies on selling leftovers). Still, Ross has been judicious in its approach to store expansion, not coming to the East Coast before it was ready. And the company has reduced inventory 40% and sped up turnover to make sure it has merchandise that will keep enticing customers to come two to three times a month, compared with less than one for the average department store. Rentler is betting that will help her build Ross to 2,500 stores from 1,500. Ross may not follow the standard path, but you'd be foolhardy to bet against it.

Barbara Rentler

Tencent is best known for its WeChat service (which has 800 million users), but the company now gets half its revenues from online and mobile games. Indeed, it is on track to become the biggest gaming company in the world after announcing an $8.6 billion deal for a controlling stake in Supercell Oy, maker of the video-game Clash of Clans. Meanwhile, Tencent has been turning in juggernaut numbers, with revenues of $18.8 billion in its most recent 12 months, nearly twice the figure for 2013, and a surging net income of $5.1 billion. Result: a 37% jump in stock price so far in 2016. Earlier this year, Ma announced he would donate shares worth $2 billion to charity; then, in September, he decided to direct an additional 2% of Tencent’s profits every year to philanthropies.

Pony Ma

In Larry Fink's 28th year as CEO, the world's largest money manager surpassed a jaw-dropping milestone: $5 trillion in assets under management, up 10% since 2015. BlackRock's ETFs now total $1.3 trillion, and that was before the firm made its flagship iShares products even cheaper than Vanguard's. Those assets give Fink a lot of weight in the market and in politics, where he's bandied about as a potential Treasury Secretary in a Clinton administration. Fink says he wants the heretofore timid giant to wield some clout: In February he wrote to 500 CEOs urging them to invest for the long term. [hotlink]BlackRock[/hotlink] even led its first activist campaign this year, at a Hong Kong financial company. Says Blackstone's Steve Schwarzman, "Larry is an extraordinary businessperson."

Larry Fink

Oscar Munoz suffered a major heart attack on his 38th day as CEO of [hotlink]United Continental[/hotlink] in October 2015. It marked the start of a series of medical trials that, on and off, kept him sidelined for six of his first seven months at United. On Jan. 5, his birthday, Munoz received a heart transplant in an 11-hour operation and then returned to the job after an extraordinarily brief recovery of just over two months. In fact, Munoz is one of the very few CEOs of a major company to ever continue in the top job after receiving a heart transplant. “This is the craziest human-interest story ever,” says Robert Milton, who joined the United board in March at Munoz’s behest and now serves as chairman. “I took the job in part because I wanted this guy to win.”
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Munoz has done more than survive. In his short tenure so far, he has ended years of labor strife by reaching new deals with the company’s four major unions, recruited away top talent from the airline’s rivals, and boosted United’s on-time arrivals. And Wall Street has taken notice: As of early November, United’s stock price had soared 44% in four months—besting fellow mega-carriers American (37%) and [hotlink]Delta[/hotlink] (17%). Indeed, a comeback at United promises to substantially shift the balance of power in the $700 billion global airlines industry.
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Excerpted from “A Miracle Comeback At United,” by Shawn Tully.

Oscar Munoz

It’s not just Baby Boomers taking to the road in recreational vehicles these days. Millennials are climbing aboard the trend and RV-maker Thor is cashing in. Profits have accelerated a cumulative 68% since Martin took the helm in 2013 and margins have steadily improved.

Robert Martin

Disney’s stock has slipped partly due to concerns about growth at sports powerhouse ESPN. That tamped Iger’s ranking (as did questions about succession planning). Still, [hotlink]Disney[/hotlink] opened its long-awaited Shanghai resort this year and Iger is delivering on the most important measure in his control: Profits over the past 12 months rose 20% compared to 2014 results.

Robert Iger

It was inevitable that the torrid pace of EA’s revenue and profit gains would slow after the company’s dramatic comeback (from $8 million in profits in 2014 to $875 million a year later). But Wilson has kept the trend going in the right direction, with $1.3 billion in earnings over the past 12 months. For more on Wilson, <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/09/26/fifa-andrew-wilson-ea-fortune-unfiltered/" target="_blank">listen to the Fortune Unfiltered podcast</a>.

Andrew Wilson

Last year’s No. 1 continues to deliver the numbers (including exceeding expectations in the most recent quarter), but Adidas and UnderArmour are nipping at the company’s heels in categories such as athleisure, one reason the company’s stock has fallen about 20% this year.

Mark Parker

Bettinger took the helm at Schwab in October 2008, possibly the most fraught moment for a financial institution since 1929. He helped Schwab weather the storm and the company has lately been ticking off a series of records in assets under management (now $2.7 trillion), quarterly revenues ($1.9 billion), and profits ($503 million, up 34%).

Walter Bettinger

The world’s largest clothing retailer has seen brands like Zara and Massimo Dutti become fashion phenomena in part because their low-inventory, fast-response strategy makes them ultra-responsive to customer’s needs. Under Isla, CEO since 2005, Inditex has more than tripled revenues and quadrupled products. Of late, the company has begun slowing its store growth in favor of an emphasis on online sales.

Pablo Isla

Cameron’s second turn as CEO of Reynolds has been book-ended by the announcements of two deals: the purchase of Lorillard in 2014 and now the company’s proposed acquisition by BAT. How has Reynolds done during that span? At a time when smoking is in decline, the Lorillard deal has helped lift Reynolds profits by more than $4 billion (though the company’s most recent earnings didn’t fulfill analysts’ expectations). Cameron has announced that she will retire next year.

Susan Cameron

CEO since September 2013, this former Ericsson executive has sought to introduce discipline (read: cost cuts) into what some have viewed as an altruistic mission, looking to help wind power technology mature so that it no longer require subsidies to attract customers. Under Runevad, Vestas (founded as a blacksmith shop in 1898) passed $10 billion in revenues in the most recent 12 months, with profits now at a healthy $907 million. By contrast, Vestas lost $1.3 billion in the last full year before Runevad took over.

Anders Runevad

Starbucks’ stock has lately been as tepid as day-old latte, but the CEO has doubled the company’s revenues since he returned for his second stint in 2008, surpassing $20 billion for the first time over the past 12 months, according to [hotlink]S&amp;P Global[/hotlink]. [hotlink]Starbucks[/hotlink] now has 25,000 stores in 75 countries, with plans to open its first outpost in the home of cappuccino—Italy—next year.

Howard Schultz

Once an auto parts unit of [hotlink]General Motors[/hotlink], Nexteer is now majority owned by Aviation Industry Corporation of China. Under Zhao, CEO since mid-2012, the company has stepped up revenues 71% and quintupled its earnings.

Guibin Zhao

Being CEO of a company that makes tanks and submarines during a time of constricted federal budgets is no picnic and indeed Novakovic has labored to keep revenues flat. But the one-time CIA operative has brought discipline to operations— trimming costs and bolstering profits and return on equity.

Phebe Novakovic

A believer in management by walking around, this aviation veteran has maintained strong operational performance while expanding Hawaiian’s routes. As a result, profits have been taking off: In the most recent 12 months, they soared five times as high as they were in 2013.

Mark Dunkerly

Daughter of a New York City cop, Keane once worked as a bill collector for Citibank. She has also proven adept at collecting revenues and profits, delivering records in those categories in the most recent quarter for the private-label credit card company (which was once the consumer-finance unit of [hotlink]GE[/hotlink] Capital).

Margaret Keane

In his four years as CEO of this Milwaukee-based maker of water heaters, Rajendra has kept the company boiling hot, doubling profits and nearly tripling the company’s stock price with strong growth in North America and China.

Ajita Rajendra

Skechers’ founder, Greenberg, likes to call his footwear company “America’s family brand” but it’s increasingly a worldwide brand as the company now has 1,500 stores. Though some see its offerings as frumpy, Skechers has reached $1 billion in the higher-end “performance” category in the space of five years. The company posted record sales in its most recent quarter.

Robert Greenberg

The author of a book about India’s second largest private bank has described it as “boring and steady.” In a financial institution, that’s a good thing. But under managing director Aditya Puri, who has led HDFC for two decades, there’s been nothing boring about its growth, from a pipsqueak with $40 million in revenues to one of India’s largest banks, with $5.6 billion. It turned those revenues into an impressive $1.9 billion in profits last year. HDFC’s U.S. ADRs enjoyed a 15-year run that took them up a cumulative 2200% before easing off of late.

Aditya Puri

Thirteen uninterrupted years of gaudy revenue growth, and comparable profit expansion (the latter streak broken only by the 2008 recession) is only part of what has made [hotlink]Under Armour[/hotlink] a signature success of the century so far. Elbowing its way into a realm with heavyweight competitors such as [hotlink]Nike[/hotlink] and [hotlink]Adidas[/hotlink], Under Armour continues to score coups, including with a Steph Curry shoe, and shows no sign of slowing down.

Kevin Plank

The world’s largest insulin maker has stuck with a big bet on diabetes, which has meant huge margins as the disease exacts an ever-widening toll. During Sorensen’s 16 years as CEO, he consistently delivered healthy growth, with revenues five times as big as when he took the helm and profits reaching a record $5.6 billion (on $16.7 billion in sales) in the past 12 months. Now, though, Novo Nordisk faces pricing pressures and Sorenson will retire at year’s end.

Lars Sorensen

Alaska Air’s well-regarded and down-to-earth CEO, at the controls since 2012, is on pace to deliver three times the profits this year that the company had when he took over.

Bradley Tilden

One of the apostles of a post-cash world, Banga has been aggressive, expanding [hotlink]Mastercard[/hotlink] overseas, lately inking an alliance with [hotlink]PayPal[/hotlink] for in-store purchases while also buying a rival to PayPal’s Venmo peer-to-peer payment app.

Ajay Banga

The managed-care giant generated $4.8 billion in revenues a mere five years ago; it reached $33 billion in its most recent 12 months after a string of acquisitions (most recently of rival Health Net). [hotlink]Centene[/hotlink] now has 11.4 million customers.

Michael Neidorff

This maker of heart valves stumbled with lower-than-expected international sales in its most recent earnings announcement, but Mussallem—the only CEO the Baxter spinoff has had in its 16 years of existence—has an impressive record, with 11 straight years of increases in operating earnings.

Michael Mussallem

Just over a century ago, Koito was founded to build railway lamps; today it’s still a supplier of lighting, now mostly for cars (the largest headlight-maker in the world with customers ranging from [hotlink]Toyota[/hotlink] and [hotlink]Nissan[/hotlink], to [hotlink]GM[/hotlink] and Volkswagen), airplanes, and ships. Under Otake, CEO since 2007, Koito has been riding the LED boom, and since the global recession of 2008-09, the company has delivered seven consecutive years of steadily brighter revenues and profits.

Masahiro Otake

A company veteran, Guthart became CEO of this maker of surgical robotics in 2010 and he has been leading a comeback since questions were raised in 2013 about “adverse events” linked to the use of its da Vinci system. Since then, the tide has begun turning and profits reached a record $722 million over the past 12 months.

Gary Guthart

Veteran CEO of this lighting and fixture company has ridden the increasing popularity of LED bulbs, nearly tripling profits over the past five years while improving margins.

Vernon Nagel

You can’t build skyscrapers without elevators and this Finish elevator maker has had the largest market share in the hottest market: China. Unfortunately for Kone, the company just projected declining sales in that market next year, effectively pushing the “down” button on its share price.

Henrik Ehrnrooth

The maker of Subaru cars will change its name next year to match its auto brand. Under Yoshinaga, Fuji has moved to partner with other companies in developing new models and its crossover vehicles have been popular in the U.S. Result: 12-month sales of $31.7 billion (vs. $18.4 billion in the year before Yoshinaga took over in 2012) and profits have leaped from $466 million to $4 billion.

Yasuyuki Yoshinaga

The [hotlink]eBay[/hotlink] payments spinoff has passed $10 billion in revenues in the past 12 months, according to [hotlink]S&amp;P Global[/hotlink], and, under Schulman, a former executive at [hotlink]American Express[/hotlink] and [hotlink]AT&amp;T[/hotlink], it’s partnering with erstwhile rivals [hotlink]Visa[/hotlink] and [hotlink]Mastercard[/hotlink], which lowers fees but should expand its reach.

Daniel Schulman

The homebuilder has come roaring back after the housing crisis, steadily rebuilding its revenues and profits (though it hasn’t yet achieved its pre-crisis highs).

Paul Saville

Once the finance minister of France (and a former Harvard Business School professor), Breton has led the IT services company since 2009 and gained some notoriety for banning email at his company (he does permit texting). Meanwhile, he has more than doubled profits since 2011 and the company’s stock has climbed by 30% over the past year.