Investor magazine lists Nooyi, Ayer, D'Souza among best CEOs in US

Three India-origin chief executives - Indra Nooyi, Ramani Ayer and Francisco D'Souza – have found top position in the list of '2009 America's Best CEOs,' compiled by the Institutional Investor magazine. 

The magazine has bestowed praise on these CEOs, including soft drinks maker Pepsico's Nooyi, insurance entity Hartford Financial Services' Ramani Ayer and IT services major Cognizant Technology Solutions' D'Souza, for "being forthright and transparent with shareholders."

The magazine has carried out a survey of over 900 investment professionals from over 460 institutions in the US, with combined assets of $6.6 trillion in equities to identify the best CEOs in 57 industry sectors.

The top-ranked CEOs scored high marks for "being forthright and transparent with shareholders and smart with their companies' balance sheets'' as also for ''keeping their companies on course,'' the magazine said.

Indra Nooyi took the top spot in the `beverages' segment, with Coca-Cola's Muhtar Kent taking the second spot.

Ramani Ayer is at the third position in CEO ranking in the `life insurance' sector, where Aflac's Daniel Amos is at the top and Metlife's C Robert Henrikson is second.

D'Souza is third in the list in the `Computer Services & IT Consulting' segment where Accenture's William Green leads the list and Automatic Data Processing's Gary Butler ranks second.

Google's Eric Schmidt, Microsoft chief Steven Ballmer, Oracle Corp's Lawrence Ellison, News Corp's Keith (Rupert) Murdoch and General Electric's Jeffrey Immelt are other prominent names in the list.