Ratan Tata tops ET's Most Powerful CEO list for 3rd year in row
29 Apr 2011
Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata group, has topped the ET-Corporate Dossier's annual listing of India's 'most powerful CEO' for the third year in a row.
The IMRB survey, in which 500 senior executives from India Inc are asked to rate CEOs on ladership, strategy and innovation, performance, stature, social contribution and governance, saw Mukesh Ambani, chairman, Reliance Industries holding on to the second place.
Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel came third (from fifth last year) and Azim Premji of Wipro moved up to fourth position (from sixth). Anil Ambani, the younger Ambani sibling, slipped by one position and was ranked in the fifth position, followed by Infosys founder and chairman, N R Narayana Murthy, at number six. The Infosys chief had topped the list for the first three years since its inception seven years ago.
Of the 100 CEOs featured in the list, 52 are promoters of their groups / companies or members of the traditional business families. Forty professional CEOs, including 11 from public sector undertakings, also figure in the list. The survey also features other categories including global Indian business leaders. L.N. Mittal, the UK-based Indian-origin steel baron, heads this list, followed by Indra Nooyi of Pepsico and Vikram Pandit of Citi.
Topping the list of Indian thought leaders is consultant Ram Charan, followed by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and dean of Harvard Business School Nitin Nohria.
ICICI Bank's Chanda Kochhar is placed at number eight in the list of most powerful CEOs. Another woman bank CEO to figure in the list is Shikha Sharma of Axis Bank (number 24). Other bankers and financiers in the top-20 include Aditya Puri of HDFC Bank Ltd, Deepak Parekh of HDFC, O.P. Bhatt, who recently retired as chairman of State Bank of India, and Uday Kotak of Kotak Mahindra.
The list of 10 most powerful MNC CEOs included Ravi Venkatesan, who recently quit as head of Microsoft India and is to join the Infosys board as a director, Naina Lal Kidwai of HSBC, Nitin Paranjpe of Hindustan Unilever, D. Shivakumar of Nokia and Shailesh Rao of Google.
