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Corporate chiefs encountered some big surprises in the past year, including Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, along with sharp swings in oil prices, interest rates, and currencies. But let’s not be overly dramatic. Compared with nine years ago, when a worldwide financial meltdown upended and redefined industries, 2016 wasn’t a crisis year for management.

Perhaps the biggest challenge chief executives faced is that the global economic recovery is looking old and slow. In the U.S., gross domestic product grew by just 1.6% last year, the slowest pace since 2011. Profits for companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose by less than 1% last year after shrinking the year before. There are signs, if not guarantees, that faster growth is now afoot.

 

The 30 leaders whom Barron’s identified this year as the world’s best CEOs have demonstrated an ability to outperform during a slow patch for commerce. The past year was a good time to be nimble and an even better time to reap rewards from sound plans set in motion years ago—as they did.

One newcomer this year, Mary Barra at General Motors (ticker: GM), who graces our cover this week, exemplified traits that impressed us. Barra slashed the car maker’s costs by $4 billion, but GM hasn’t cut corners; last year, Chevrolet won the most J.D. Power Initial Quality awards of any automotive brand. There is more room for improvement, Barra says: “Having the leanest cost structure will allow us to perform well through the cycle. We can break even now at 10 million to 11 million cars a year in North America.” The recent annual pace of U.S. light-vehicle sales is over 17 million.

Barra also has made an impression in Washington, where she sits on the president’s Strategic and Policy Forum of economic advisors. She recently won plaudits from the administration for keeping some manufacturing jobs in Michigan.

GM has made progress shrinking its losses in Europe, but this month announced a deal to sell its Opel and Vauxhall brands to France’s PSA Groupe (UG.France). Europe was never going to be a winner for GM because it lacked scale there. “Our European team was doing an excellent job, but only 20% of the Opel portfolio was on a common platform with the rest of the globe,” Barra says.

PSA chief Carlos Tavares, also new to our list, will make a better go of GM’s brands by combining them with thriving Peugeot and Citroën.

For Barra and GM, saying goodbye to a source of yearly losses is as good as finding fresh growth. Analysts are raising earnings estimates for the company and rethinking how long the current up cycle can last.

Another newcomer to our list, Satya Nadella, has transformed Microsoft (MSFT) from a potential cloud victim into a cloud landlord. That has involved reinventing Microsoft Windows and Office as online services that generate steady licensing and subscription fees, and establishing Azure as a lucrative cloud platform, helped by the fact that so many servers already run Microsoft software. Thanks to Nadella’s changes, investors now treat Microsoft as a growth stock. It sells for 20 times forward earnings, up from nine times earnings just four years ago.

OTHER CEOS NEW to the list this year are Gary Dickerson at Applied Materials (AMAT), Stephen Hemsley at UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Jen-Hsun “Jensen” Huang at Nvidia (NVDA), Phebe Novakovic at General Dynamics (GD), and Martin Sorrell at WPP (WPP.-UK). Write-ups of all 30 chiefs follow.

There’s no rigid formula for inclusion on our list, although we want CEOs to have been in the post for about three years or more. Warren Buffett wins the prize for longevity; he has run Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) since 1965. Selection is based on the judgment of Barron’s editors and writers. In keeping with Barron’s investment focus, we generally favor leaders whose actions have paid off handsomely for long-term shareholders.

 

Only two chief executives have made our list since we first started publishing it in 2005: Buffett and Michael O’Leary at Ryanair Holdings (RYA.Ireland). Two of our holdovers from last year have already announced their retirement: David Cote will step down as CEO of Honeywell International (HON) at the end of this month, and Howard Schultz will give up the CEO job at Starbucks (SBUX) in April.

Turnover is common on the list. This year’s eight new names mean that eight other CEOs were removed. Two sportswear bigs are off: Mark Parker at Nike (NKE) has been challenged by slowing growth and an inventory buildup owed in part to retail weakness, including a bankruptcy filing at the Sports Authority last year. Kevin Plank at Under Armour (UA) has all these problems and more. Basketball shoes tied to pricey pitchman Steph Curry have had, like Curry himself, a quiet year.

Anand Mahindra is now executive chairman of Indian conglomerate Mahindra & Mahindra (500520.India), relinquishing the role of managing director—equivalent to CEO—as part of succession planning. The others who fell off the list mostly got caught up in slowing growth.

Bernard Arnault

LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton CEO

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It’ s no mean feat that Arnault has increased sales year after year of the most discretionary goods imaginable. Doing it at a behemoth like LVMH—70 brands, a $100 billion market cap—is more impressive still. Perhaps his engineering background helped him devise the formula: Buy up small luxury brands, such as Ta g Heuer in 1999; nurture them; and rev up sales through a prodigious global distribution system, including nearly 4,000 stores.

Last year, while U.S. luxury brands stumbled, France’s maker of Louis Vuitton handbags and Hennessy cognac posted 5% group sales growth and an 11% rise in profit. Sales expanded in all divisions. Arnault, 68, isn’t sitting on his laurels. LVMH recently bought Rimowa, a 119-year-old German luggage maker, and plans a big push in China for Tag Heuer watches. Up next: LVMH aims to become digitally savvy and expand online sales.

 

— Vito J. Racanelli

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Mary Barra

General Motors CEO

Bob Stefko for Barron’s

Barra is blowing up the corporate culture at GM. A company lifer and onetime engineer, Barra, 55, led the sale of the Detroit giant’s loss-making European unit to France’s PSA Groupe. The deal reverses a century of GM empire-building and reflects her emphasis on profitability. It also challenges the view that megascale is key for auto-industry success.

Barra, who spent much of her first year as CEO dealing with GM’s ignition-switch debacle, is trying to build a nimbler company, and getting kudos in Washington, D.C., for adding some jobs in the U.S. She thinks that dollars saved in Europe can be better used to develop next-generation mobility. On her watch, GM launched the first mass-market electric car with over 235 miles of range, and delivered record earnings in 2015 and 2016.

 

— Richard Rescigno

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Jeffrey Bezos

Amazon.com CEO

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At most companies, a CEO’s pet projects are seen as wasteful and selfish. But at Amazon.com, they’re part of the investment case. Bezos, 53, turned an Internet bookseller into an e-commerce juggernaut. But his follow-up move into the profitable cloud-computing business was his best idea yet. And there’s plenty more in the works: drones, grocery stores, in-house freight, apparel making. Maybe even the moon?

Investors keep bidding up Amazon’s shares because they trust Bezos’ instincts. And so do we—whether in retailing or the Washington Post, which he bought and has re-energized

 

— Alexander Eule

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Carlos Brito

Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO

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Brito, 56, likes to say that “dreaming big or small takes the same amount of energy.” So why not dream big? He certainly did. In under two decades, Brito turned a Brazilian brewer into the world’s dominant beer company, following last year’s $100 billion acquisition of SABMiller. AB InBev now controls seven of the 10 leading global brands, including Budweiser and Stella Artois.

Brito is a leading practitioner of the Brazilian school of management, which emphasizes stringent cost controls. With SABMiller, the company aims to realize nearly $3 billion in annual cost savings.

AB InBev shares have flatlined in recent years, reflecting tough beer-market conditions globally. With no major beer deals likely, Brito’s challenge is growth, which might come from outside the beer business. One potential megatarget: Coca-Cola.

 

— Andrew Bary

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Warren Buffett

Berkshire Hathaway CEO

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Buffett’s transformation of a struggling textile maker into Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate with a $420 billion market value, is one of the greatest achievements in business history. Since he took charge 52 years ago, Berkshire’s Class A shares have risen to $255,000 from about $20, a nearly 13,000-fold gain, propelled by the strength of the company’s insurance, manufacturing, energy, and other holdings.

At 86, Buffett is as sharp as ever, even though his body, as he said, “is getting down to salvage value.” He hates meetings, spends much of the day reading, and makes split-second investment decisions. And
he still eats like a kid, washing down a McDonald’s breakfast with a Coke. Buffett aims to give away nearly all of his fortune, which could exceed $100 billion. His investment skill and management savvy have created huge fortunes for others, too

 

— A.B.

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David Cote

Honeywell International CEO

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“When I first came into this job, the press wasn’t kind to me,” recalls Honeywell’s Cote (pronounced co-tee). Some news reports from 2002 pointed out that the General Electric alum and former TRW head wasn’t Honeywell’s first choice. He should have been, it’s now clear. Cote, 64, turned losses into $5 billion in annual profit. Shares have returned more than 13% a year, compounded, in the past decade, far better than the broad market.

Cote‘s dozens of small deals moved Honeywell away from defense and into energy-efficient equipment, where demand has boomed. Most of the profit improvement, he says, came from growing sales of high-margin products while holding costs steady. Cote will step down at the end of the month, and Chief Operating Officer Darius Adamczyk will take over. Thanks to his big investment in software engineers, Cote leaves the company well positioned for smart factories, smart homes—and smart investors.

 

— Jack Hough

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Gary Dickerson

Applied Materials CEO

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A year ago, Wall Street analysts predicted that Applied Materials would have revenue of $10.5 billion in fiscal 2017, ending in October. Now they forecast $13.2 billion. Demand is booming for semiconductor equipment and services, due to a shift to smaller chip circuits; demand for screens using organic light-emitting diodes, or OLED; investment in three-dimensional memory architectures; and a chip-making race in China. Applied has a particularly strong hand because Dickerson stepped up research-and-development spending and innovation. “You can talk about growth, but what actions are you taking?” asks Dickerson. “Moving that money isn’t an easy thing to do.”

Increased investment solidified the company’s position in lucrative new markets. “We used to be driven entirely by PCs,” says Dickerson, 60. “Now we have mobile devices, cloud, cars, and much more.

 

— J.H.

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Jamie Dimon

JPMorgan Chase CEO

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Shareholders of JPMorgan are fortunate that Dimon resisted overtures, including a rumored one from President Donald Trump, to become Treasury secretary. The bank he runs is stronger than ever, with leading market positionsin credit cards, investment banking, private banking, and other businesses. It boasts a $315 billion market value and $25 billion in annual earnings, both industry records. A big investment in technology has given the bank an edge.

Dimon, 61, the country’s top banker, has been an effective advocate for an industry that finds itself less embattled under Trump. Dimon has praised the president for his pro-growth economic policies, business-friendly cabinet, and desire to ease regulatory burdens. JPMorgan spends an estimated $9 billion a year complying with regulations.

 

— A.B.

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Laurence Fink

BlackRock CEO

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Even as many other asset managers struggle, BlackRock keeps raking in the dough. Last year, the world’s largest money manager, which oversees $5.1 trillion, had net inflows of $202 billion, about 70% directed toward its hugely successful iShares exchange-traded-fund franchise, which Fink bought in 2009. Fink, 64, who co-founded BlackRock as an institutional bond manager, says the firm is “agnostic with clients” about the merits of active versus passive investing. It excels at both.

In December, Fink was named to President-elect Donald Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum, a group of business leaders charged with giving guidance on job creation and other economic issues. Many BlackRock clients have been inquiring about the president’s ambitiouslegislative agenda. “If he’s able to accomplish all that he’s trying to do, there’s another leg up for the market,” Fink says

 

— Lawrence C. Strauss

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Reed Hastings

Netflix CEO

Art Streiber/AUGUST

Netflix evolved from shipping DVDs by mail to streaming video over the Internet to creating original content, such as The White Helmets,a documentary that won the company its first Oscar. Through it all, Hastings, 56, has been a sublimely calm disrupter of traditional media empires. Credit that to the vision thing, which has remained remarkably consistent.

Hastings recently described an insight he gained while a computer-science student: A car full of computer tapes could haul an enormous amount of data across the country. But the Internet, he realized, would someday become a far more efficient way to transport bits and bytes. Hastings’ next challenge is to tailor more original content to local tastes in 190 countries, the likes of which no media company has ever done.

 

— Tiernan Ray

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Stephen Hemsley

UnitedHealth Group CEO

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Under Hemsley, the managed-care giant has achieved a stock market value similar to the combined market caps of its four chief rivals—Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, and Humana. In part, that’s because Hemsley, 64, nurtured UnitedHealth’s higher-margin noninsurance business, Optum, which now accounts for more than 40% of profit. Optum operates the country’s No. 3 pharmacy-benefits provider, owns many physician practices, and runs a well-respected technology and data-analytics business. Optum was brought in to fix the HealthCare.gov Website in 2013 after Obamacare’s messy debut.

Hemsley encourages employee feedback and has developed the industry’s best leadership team. UnitedHealth could generate 15% compound growth in earnings per share through 2020, says Bernstein analyst Lance Wilkes.

 

— A.B.

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Jen-Hsun Huang

Nvidia CEO

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It was never certain that Nvidia, known for high-speed chips for videogame consoles, would have a broader role in computing. But Huang, 54, who started the company in a rented town house, never wavered in his faith that Nvidia’s graphics chips had a greater destiny. When efforts to sell mobile computing chips didn’t pan out, he pivoted, finding a big new market powering automobiles.

In recent years,the man whose first job was as a busboy, waiter, and dishwasher at a Denny’s has bought every Tesla model, which just happen to use his company’s chips. Huang is intense in conversation, hammering home the technical details as to why his technology is the best for self-driving cars. His newest market is a form of artificial intelligence popularized by companies like Alphabet that increasingly rely on his graphic chips.

 

— T. R.

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Ma Huateng

Tencent Holdings CEO

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Tencent, owner of the widely used messaging app WeChat, surpassed China Mobile to become Asia’s most valuable company last year. And it has ample room to grow. Founder Ma has been adding new revenue streams to the vibrant WeChat ecosystem, which boasts 889 million active users.

Ma, 45, has invested in companies both in and beyond China to support Tencent’s future growth. The company is a major stakeholder in Singapore-based Garena, an online gaming and social platform. It also is looking to invest in Go-Jek, an Indonesian motorbike-taxi hailing app.

Tencent shares gained 24% in 2016 and are up 18% so far this year. The company is expected to generate 29% average annual earnings growth in the next three to five years.

 

— Isabella Zhong

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Robert Iger

Walt Disney CEO

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Last week, Disney extended Iger’s contract by a year, to July 2019—the third extension. The theme parks are thriving, and the film slate is packed; what remains is to take ESPN, a key moneymaker for the company, directly to viewers. Few Disney assets have contributed as much to the stock’s 14% compounded yearly return over the past decade—nearly double the broad market’s return. Iger’s plan is to sell ESPN as a subscription service later this year, much like Netflix, to lure sports fans who have forsaken pricey cable bundles. ESPN is already included in many “skinny bundles,” which offer fewer channels at a lower cost, and on some live TV-streaming platforms.

A massive box office take for Beauty and the Beast shows that Iger, 66, remains a hit maker. “There has been an explosion of new content,” he says. “We decided to focus on quality over quantity—names from Marvel, Pixar, Disney, and Star Wars.”

 

— J.H.

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Li Ka-shing

CK Hutchison Holdings CEO

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Li, 88, urged the United Kingdom last year to stay in the European Union. Small wonder: The U.K. is a huge source of earnings for CK Hutchison, the flagship of Hong Kong’s richest man. Assets include retail chains, ports, and a mobile-phone company. The shares fell 5% when Britons voted for Brexit.

A wily deal maker, Li moved to diversify his empire. The Australian government blocked his courtship of Aussie electricity distributor Ausgrid on national-security grounds. But Li’s other conglomerate, Cheung Kong Infrastructure, picked up DUET Group, an Australian infrastructure play, on its second try.

CK Hutchison shares have returned an average of 15% annually in the past five years, versus about 7% for Hong Kong stocks overall. Li is known for his modesty in ostentatious Hong Kong, having worn the same basic wristwatch for decades.

 

— Daniel Shane

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Satya Nadella

Microsoft CEO

Joe Pugliese/AUGUST

The numbers speak for themselves: Under Steve Ballmer’s 14-year tenure, Microsoft shares returned a total of minus 11%. In just three years under Nadella, the return has been 93%. Nadella, 49, has pushed Microsoft in entirely new directions, all while energizing the brands that sustained the software giant for decades.

The company is taking on Amazon.com and salesforce.com in the cloud, and creating innovative hardware that has pushed Apple to rethink its strategy. Nadella has helped his team shed the defensive posture that once held Microsoft back. One of his first acts as CEO was launching Office apps on Apple’s iPad. Apple now features Microsoft Word in its latest TV commercial for the iPad.

The PC-or-Mac debate is being reframed, and this time Nadella is making Microsoft the cool one.

 

— A.E.

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Shantanu Narayen

Adobe Systems CEO

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Adobe had long dominated desktop publishing when Narayen became CEO in 2007. But the company’s dominance was at risk, with the explosion of mobile devices and the emergence of cloud computing. Narayen, 53, understood the stakes. “Our brand is so incredible on those desktop products. That’s the blessing,” he told Barron’s in 2013. But “you can’t preserve the status quo.”

Four years later, much has changed in Adobe’s world—but not its dominance. Adobe’s mobile apps integrate with its flagship software via the cloud. Moreover, the cloud platform has helped Adobe justify its move to a subscription-based model. The company no longer sells “boxed” software. Adobe has an estimated 10 million Creative Cloud members, paying between $10 and $50 a month. That’s a new kind of blessing for Adobe and its boss.

 

— A.E.

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Phebe Novakovic

General Dynamics CEO

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Before Novakovic became CEO, few shareholders knew her. But they knew that her predecessor had overspent on deals for the defense contractor, some $2 billion of which Novakovic would have to write down. The CEO, a former spy, moved quickly to reassure investors. “It’s our job to right-size our businesses, drive costs out, and perform for our customers and our shareholders and our people,” she said.

Novakovic, 59, followed her father, a Serbian immigrant who worked for the U.S. Air Force, into government service, picking a path through the Central Intelligence Agency, the White House, and the Defense Department. An opera lover, she joined General Dynamics in 2001 and ran its submarine business before becoming CEO. “She came in during a severe downturn” and managed the company “gracefully and well,” says Ron Epstein of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

 

— Leslie P. Norton

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Michael O'Leary

Ryanair Holdings CEO

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Behind O’Leary’s colorful and quotable exterior— he reportedly tells employees to steal hotel pens to save costs—lies a shrewd businessman. Since late 2013, shares of his Ireland-based budget airline, Ryanair, have roughly doubled the performance of U.S. stocks in dollar terms.

O’Leary, 56, has transformed European air travel in the past two decades. He’s not afraid to criticize rivals, regulators, unions, or anyone else who stands in the way of low costs and cheap fares. Ryanair’s declining costs—they’re expected to be down 4% in fiscal 2017—give it a long-term leg up on other carriers whose expenses are rising.

A weak pound and potential turbulence tied to the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union pose challenges. But O’Leary is pivoting Ryanair’s growth away from the U.K. He’s just the pilot you’d want in such circumstances.

 

— V.J.R.

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Larry Page

Alphabet CEO

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Page , 44, is one of the most elusive tech chieftains. He never talks to Wall Street anymore and rarely does interviews. As head of the tech world’s only holding company, which owns Google, he has delegated day-to-day responsibilities to a number of high-profile deputies. Page has described himself as the arbiter of how to allocate Alphabet’s capital to new technologies, like self-driving cars.

Page, who co-founded Google, is also an impresario of big ideas, capable of sitting for hours with researchers to discuss the intricacies of, say, artificial intelligence. His fascination with the next big thing has led him to pursue private outside investments, including pouring millions into two start-ups working on flying cars. Investors can’t complain about the results thus far: Alphabet’s sales have risen more than 20%, on average, for 23 quarters in a row.

 

— T.R.

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Aditya Puri

HDFC Bank, Managing Director

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A 2014 trip to Silicon Valley made Puri a digital evangelist. In hallmark style, the banker swiftly set out to remake India’s second-largest private-sector bank into the digital spot for anything money-related. That’s proving to be a bigger competitive advantage than even he imagined, as India’s surprise demonetization in November, which voided 86% of the country’s cash, catapulted demand for digital payments.

Puri, 66, has transformed HDFC from a start-up into one of the world’s highest-quality banks, generating eye-popping returns by maintaining lending standards while expanding beyond corporate loans into a full-service retail bank. At a recent conference, he told an audience of techies, “If you have a good product and can make me money, then I’ll help you make money.” Given Puri’s track record, that sounds like a good proposition.

 

— Reshma Kapadia

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Brian Roberts

Comcast CEO

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Comcast investors don’t seem too worried about cord-cutting. Shares are up 25% in a year, perhaps because in 2016 the company, which also owns NBC and Universal studios and theme parks, posted its best cable subscriber growth in a decade.

“We saw many of these changes coming,” says longtime chief Brian Roberts, son of Comcast founder Ralph Roberts. In response to the rise of third-party set-top boxes and video-streaming services, Comcast raised its broadband speeds 14 times in 12 years, added voice commands to its X1 cable platform, and turned competing services into features. Netflix showed up on X1 late last year.

Roberts, 57, has invested aggressively in parks, paying attention to rival Disney. Volcano Bay, opening in May at Universal Orlando Resort, will feature wristbands for virtual line-waiting, after Disney World’s wristbands increased park spending.

 

— J.H.

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Howard Schultz

Starbucks CEO

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Part coffee connoisseur, part social entrepreneur, Schultz, 63, brought Europe’s cafe culture to the U.S. in a grande way. Then he took it global. Today, Starbucks boasts over 25,000 stores in 75 countries, serving 90 million people a week. Since his return as CEO in 2008 after a brief hiatus, the company has achieved impressive same-store sales gains while other restaurants struggled. Revenue has more than doubled, to a recent $21.3 billion, and the stock is up more than 500%, versus a 100% gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.

When Schultz steps down as CEO in April, shareholders won’t be alone in saluting him. He pioneered innovations such as loyalty cards and mobile pay, hired veterans, and offered health-care benefits to part-time employees. Schultz took Starbucks’ mission statement—to “inspire and nurture the human spirit”—as seriously as the latte.

 

— Robin Goldwyn Blumenthal

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Fred Smith

FedEx CEO

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Smith founded FedEx during the Nixon administration and keeps it relevant in the digital age. Last year, the global shipper hit a three-year target of increasing annual operating profit in its legacy air business by $1.6 billion.

One key to FedEx’s success has been Smith’s willingness “to take short-term pain for long-term gain,” says Alex Fitch of Harris Associates. For example, FedEx spent about $4 billion on improvements in its air- and ground-delivery segments in the latest fiscal year, 40% more than two years ago. Capital spending depressed profit margins in the ground operation but will produce “a faster network down the road,” says Fitch. That will be critical as e-commerce grows.

Smith, 72, relinquished the president’s title in February to David J. Bronczek, FedEx’s chief operating officer. But Smith remains in the driver’s seat.

 

— L.C.S.

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Martin Sorrell

WPP CEO

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The hard-charging Sorrell, 72, rarely stops working. The fruit of his labors, built over decades, is the world’s biggest advertising company, with a $27 billion stock market value. Sorrell has improved results steadily since the 2008 financial crisis, while also making acquisitions, buying back shares, and raising the dividend; it was up 27% last year.

After a solid 2016, WPP’s London-traded shares dropped this month on lower 2017 guidance. However, the weak British pound should help its North American business, about a third of sales.

Sorrell lists WPP’s challenges: weak growth at big clients; fierce industry price competition; and negotiating the move from print to digital advertising, which means battling Facebook and Google. Thus, he’s buying up digital assets and tailoring products and services to WPP’s many giant global clients.

 

— V.J.R.

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Jeffrey Sprecher

Intercontinental Exchange CEO

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Sprecher turned a tiny power-trading business, bought for a dollar, into a giant futures and derivatives exchange that rivals longtime industry leader CME. He wrote personal checks in the early days to pay ICE’s bills. The company is best known for its oil futures contract on Brent, the international benchmark.

Sprecher, 62, scored with the 2013 purchase of NYSE, parent of the New York Stock Exchange. Profit margins have doubled, listings are up, and projected annual cost savings of more than $500 million have been realized. More recently, ICE bought Interactive Data, a provider of bond-pricing information, for $5 billion, to reduce its reliance on more-volatile trading revenue. Investors are speculating that CBOE, the largest U.S. options exchange, could be his next deal. ICE shares are up more than tenfold since a 2005 initial public offering.

 

— A.B.

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Carlos Tavares

PSA Groupe CEO

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Through cost cuts and efficiency improvements, Tavares, 58, took the French car maker from a loss of 4.11 euros a share in 2013 to a profit of €2.46 in 2016. The stock responded like a tech initial public offering: up 85% since 2013 in dollar terms, outperforming a 35% rise in U.S. stocks.

For an encore, PSA’s Peugeot is buying Opel/Vauxhall from General Motors for only €2.2 billion, a move that could turn Peugeot into a European powerhouse with a 17% share, second to Volkswagen. It won’t be easy: Opel/Vauxhall lost billions of euros for years. But Portugal-born Tavares sees €1.7 billion in annual cost-saving synergies by 2026 in vehicle development, purchasing, and elsewhere.

Opel is where Peugeot was years ago. If Tavares can apply the same lessons and get 6% operating margins, he will have reshaped Europe’s car market.

 

— V.J.R.

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Miles White

Abbott Laboratories CEO

Courtesy of Abbott Laboratories

“It’s hard to balance how you shape the company for the longer term while satisfying investors for the quarter,” says White, echoing the lament of many a frustrated CEO. Yet Abbott’s longtime leader looks to have done just that with the health-care giant’s $24 billion acquisition in January of medical-device maker St. Jude Medical, Abbott’s largest deal ever. The stock is up 14% since then.

Abbott Laboratories makes everything from pacemakers to Similac infant formula. White, 62, engineered perhaps his most strategic move in 2013, when Abbott spun out its successful pharmaceutical business as AbbVie. He wanted Abbott to focus on faster-growing businesses outside the U.S., particularly in emerging markets—a plan that has paid off for investors. With Abbott digesting debt-laden St. Jude, White isn’t planning to make more megadeals in the near future. But he is looking for other ways to create shareholder value.

 

— L.C.S.

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Larry Young

Dr Pepper Snapple Group CEO

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Young is such a soda man that his blood is carbonated, he jokes. Lately, however, he has been focused on flatter fare. Dr Pepper Snapple made a $1.7 billion bet earlier this year on Bai, which makes “enhanced water”—flavored low-calorie beverages infused with antioxidants. The acquisition is helping to shift the company away from its reliance on sugary sodas at a time when carbonated soft-drink consumption in the U.S. recently hit a 30-year low.

That slump has thrown Dr Pepper’s larger competitors off course. But Young, 62, kept the company’s sales growing last year even as Coca-Cola and PepsiCo reported declines. The Bai acquisition is a risk, but there is reason to believe that Young will succeed. As one analyst says, “Dr Pepper isn’t in the business of defending historic brands by trying to fight changing consumer tastes.”

 

— Avi Salzman

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Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook CEO

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The Phillips Exeter classics scholar and Harvard University dropout turns 33 this year. He seems as engaged as ever with the technology that powers the company he built. No other tech chief is as enmeshed in the details. Whether arguing for the use of solar-powered planes to spread the Internet to farflung places or handling the fake-news debacle, Zuckerberg exudes optimism that the company can solve complex problems with sufficient thought and hard work. He is clear and consistent about corporate goals, such as bringing more video to Facebook.

Wall Street loves the results. Facebook is at the top of its game in the online-advertising world, which means that Zuckerberg’s apparent stumbles—he has yet to make good on the nearly $20 billion spent on messaging start-up WhatsApp, for example—are tolerated by investors.

 

— T.R.

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