Posted on 12/28/2025 8:12:00 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Even by the standards of the past few turbulent years, 2025 was a taxing time for chief executives. The return of Donald Trump to the White House brought trade war and plenty of chaotic policymaking besides. The battle for technological supremacy between China and the West became fiercer. At the same time, the task of turning excitement over artificial intelligence (AI) into profit remained frustratingly elusive.
Amid the turmoil, however, some bosses have had a stellar year. For the third time, The Economist has examined which chief executive did best of all. As in past years, we began by ranking companies in the S&P 1200, an index covering most big economies bar mainland China and India, by the excess shareholder returns they generated, relative to their sector. We set aside bosses who have been in place for less than three years, and took the remaining top ten as the starting point for our selection (see chart).
The bosses we considered, in ascending order of shareholder returns, were :
Armin Papperger of Rheinmetall, a German armsmaker;
Tom Palmer of Newmont, the world’s biggest gold miner;
Okada Naoki of Fujikura, a Japanese maker of fibre optics;
David Zaslav of Warner Bros Discovery, a media giant;
Son Jae-il of Hanwha Aerospace, a South Korean defence company;
Sanjay Mehrotra of Micron, an American memory-chip maker;
J. Paul Rollinson of Kinross Gold, another miner;
Vladimir Tenev of Robinhood, a retail-trading platform;
Kwak Noh-Jung of SK Hynix, a South Korean memory-chip maker;
and
Dave Mosley of Seagate Technology, an American maker of disk drives.
Two bosses were ruled out owing to poor past performance. Mr Mosley took the helm at Seagate in 2017. Between then and 2024, when it began to benefit from the AI boom, Seagate’s annual revenue dropped by two-fifths and profits slumped. Mr Zaslav of Warner Bros Discovery was excluded for a similar reason. True, he has artfully handled the bidding war for his company, playing rivals off one another to get the best price. Warner’s shares have more than doubled since rumours of a bid from Paramount, another Hollywood stalwart, were first reported in September. But a sale to Paramount or Netflix, the rival suitor, has yet to be concluded. Moreover, Warner’s financial foundations have been shaky under Mr Zaslav’s leadership. The media giant has been loss-making since it was created through a merger he orchestrated in 2022.
We excluded two more bosses over governance concerns at their companies. In February the head of Fujikura’s American business was jailed for siphoning company funds to pay for his $2.5m beach house on an island off the coast of South Carolina. Although Mr Okada was not involved, the incident hints at a lack of appropriate oversight at the firm. Governance concerns have also mired Hanwha Aerospace, which is part of Hanwha Group, a South Korean conglomerate. In March the defence company tried to issue new shares, claiming that the proceeds would pay for its expansion plans. But many suspected ulterior motives. Lee Jae-myung, now South Korea’s president, said it was a trick by the conglomerate’s chairman, who is in the process of transferring his stake in the group to his three sons, to lower inheritance taxes by causing the defence company’s share price to fall (the conglomerate denied the accusation). South Korea’s financial watchdog blocked the issuance twice, before permitting a smaller number of shares to be sold.
In some of the remaining cases, luck more than skill was to thank for lofty shareholder returns. This year the price of gold has soared by about 65%, as investors have sought a haven from geopolitical tensions. The bosses of Newmont and Kinross can claim little credit for that, and so were also ruled out.
The bosses of the two memory-chip makers on our list, Micron and SK Hynix, have also been fortunate. Both companies provide the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that has become an essential component of AI data centres. Of the two, Mr Kwak of SK Hynix is worthier of commendation. His company’s consistent investment in research and development, despite the cyclicality of its industry, has made it the world leader in HBM.
Mr Tenev of Robinhood also deserves mention. The company he co-founded has made trading easy and available to the masses. It has expanded into new areas, adding political and sports betting and pushing into tokenisation. Yet Robinhood has also frequently fallen foul of regulators. This year it paid roughly $75m to settle probes by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the Securities and Exchange Commission, two American watchdogs.
That leaves Mr Papperger of Rheinmetall—our choice as the best chief executive of 2025. After narrowly missing our shortlist in 2024, Mr Papperger has had another stellar year, generating a return for shareholders, including dividends, of 158%. Even among Europe’s booming defence contractors, which have benefited from the continent’s increased military spending, his company stands out. This year Rheinmetall won a slew of big contracts, outbidding competitors, and is expanding into naval shipbuilding with an acquisition agreed in September. It is investing heavily to help Europe rearm itself.
Mr Papperger, whom we interviewed earlier this year, has displayed both courage and conviction. In 2024 American and German spooks foiled a Russian plot to assassinate him. He has beefed up his security, but remains unintimidated. As the boss of Rheinmetall since the start of 2013, he championed Europe’s defence industry well before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, at a time when it was viewed warily by the continent. He is justly reaping the rewards of his foresight. ■
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I’d nominate the CEO of the largest enterprise who inherited the biggest problems and who has made the most progress toward cleaning up his predecessor’s mess: Donald J. Trump.
No Jensen Huang ?
Erika Kirk 🤍
>> I’d nominate the CEO of the largest enterprise who inherited the biggest problems and who has made the most progress toward cleaning up his predecessor’s mess: Donald J. Trump.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THIS!!! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I was just thinking that. What weird mental gymnastics does it take to include the robinhood guy but not him?
Amen! He’s shaking things up, something a good CEO does. Kick the ossified, lethargic organization in the rump, set bold and clear goals, hire the best people, drive people to excel, set the standard yourself as the leader, and get rid of dead wood. He excels on all counts.
Elon Musk.
If it was just money that is being observed, then it will just provide numbers for those that were part of the gaining of it. But that’s not how the position is always used.
A CEO is a contracted person, or group including his immediate assistants, to provide something the management wants him/her to accomplish. It may not be money. If they are the best in their industry, they may be making a lot of that already. It may be representation at major worldwide function, repairing problems within the purchasing and transporting of raw materials, new products, better human relations, taking over the specific industry by obtaining other businesses...anything the management wants to improve. And that’s what they are contracted for. So funds aren’t always the measure of their success as there are many goals they could be facing that don’t always mean financial gain that their contracted/expected performance was based upon.
They could be making money based upon the innovation of their product but their customer service sucks. And that is the newly recognized problem in many companies that is being looked at recently. Look at restaurants. If they are losing customers because the service is that bad, then they just raise their prices for a quick fix. That is one of the major tactics used in that industry. And something like that effects the entire industry from product to distribution to bottom line. I can remember when the Big Mac was priced at 45 cents. Now it’s $5. I sold top line sewing machines in my younger days for a major company for under $1000. Now they are $20,000 and more. Needs create the wishes for the CEO, not just cash.
wy69
Jamie Simon’s Silver play is the greatest money making machination in world history.
Accumulated 750 million ounces at ~$20/oz?
Going to $300/oz.
Heads will roll from this.
Sorry, typo.
That’s “Dimon”.
I sure wouldn’t even attempt to vote on this one. None that I ever worked for could even make the list, though in a limited way, I had a couple that were very good; just not in a major class.
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