Top 10 Longest-Serving Tech CEOs
Longevity Leaderboard
When Microsoft named Satya Nadella as its new boss this week, it ended Steve Ballmer's reign as one of the longest-serving CEOs of a tech company. That's despite an annualized total return of just 0.4 percent for the software giant's stock during Ballmer's 14 years on the job.
How does Ballmer's tenure compare with other tech chiefs? To find out, Bloomberg Rankings looked at the 100 largest tech companies by market capitalization and came up with a list of current CEOs with the longest tenures. One chief executive has held the throne more than twice as long as Ballmer. See who made the list.
10. Jim Cashman III, Ansys (Tied)
Years as CEO:
13.9
Stock's annualized total return during tenure:
25.8%
Ansys is the largest producer of manufacturing simulation software, which can cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. The company has created algorithms that mirror the laws of physics, allowing Ansys programs to model virtually anything.
10. Steve Kaufer, TripAdvisor (Tied)
Years as CEO:
13.9
Stock's annualized total return during tenure:
70.8%
9. Reed Hastings, Netflix
Years as CEO:
15.3
Stock's annualized total return during tenure:
40.8%
Netflix, the world’s largest subscription streaming service, surged to a record last month after projecting customer growth that topped analysts’ estimates and saying it may charge new users more to share accounts. The stock had the biggest gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index last year.
8. Scott Scherr, Ultimate Software Group
Years as CEO:
17.3
Stock's annualized total return during tenure:
20.2%
Scherr said in a statement that many of the company's executives have been at Ultimate for more than 10 years, and that a "huge part of our culture is our high employee retention."
7. Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com
Years as CEO:
17.7
Stock's annualized total return during tenure:
38.9%
Bezos is worth more than $30 billion and ranks among the top 20 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
6. S. Steven Singh, Concur Technologies
Years as CEO:
17.9
Stock's annualized total return during tenure:
9.6%
5. John Chambers, Cisco Systems
Years as CEO:
19
Stock's annualized total return during tenure:
14.3%
Reduced spending by customers and other changes in the networking equipment industry have complicated Chambers’s plans to leave his successor with a company on the upswing when he retires, which could happen as soon as this year.
4. Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia
Years as CEO:
20.8
Stock's annualized total return during tenure:
16.7%
3. Steve Sanghi, Microchip Technology
Years as CEO:
22.3
Stock's annualized total return during tenure:
24.1%
2. Robert Kotick, Activision Blizzard
Years as CEO:
22.9
Stock's annualized total return during tenure:
16.4%
Kotick threatened to quit in December if the company's directors didn't back his plan to have the maker of video games such as "Call of Duty" buy back $5.83 billion in stock from Vivendi.
Activision reported today fourth-quarter profit that beat analysts' estimates, but its first-quarter outlook fell short.
1. Larry Ellison, Oracle
Years as CEO:
36.7
Stock's annualized total return during tenure:
25.1%
Ellison is worth more than $40 billion and ranks eighth on the Billionaires Index. He was the highest-paid CEO in the U.S. last year, data compiled. His pay package fell 18 percent to $78.4 million for fiscal 2013 after he gave up an annual bonus and the company missed profit targets.
See our data visualization of this ranking.
METHODOLOGY: Bloomberg ranked the 100 largest technology companies by market capitalization based on the tenure of their CEOs and identified the 10 longest-serving executives. Included were e-commerce, discretionary Internet media and Internet-based services companies; excluded were technology distributors and medical software companies. Tenure and total return were calculated from the end of the month the CEO started until January 31, 2014. For companies that were not public when a CEO started, total return was calculated from the end of the month the stock began trading.
