Jeff Bezos continues to suffer from the issues raised in the bruising New York Times piece published in August. The latest hit is from the Harvard Business Review’s ranking of the best-performing CEOs, where the Amazon CEO fell from the number 1 position to number 87 after the publication started taking into account a company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance.
Last year, Bezos took the top spot due to his ability to provide valuable shareholder returns. While his financial ranking is still number one (which accounts for 80 percent of a CEO’s score), his ESG score (20 percent of the score) is the lowest of the top 100 CEOs by far, coming in at the 828th spot.
The number 1 spot this year went to Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Rebien Sørensen, who ranked 6th financially and 15th in the ESG ranking.
The ranking includes a few other Pacific Northwest leaders, including Starbucks’ Howard Schultz taking 12th place, Mark Parker from Nike at 21 and Nordstrom’s Blake Nordstrom at 38 (Update: Nordstrom is actually co-president along with his brothers Erik and Pete. The retailer doesn’t have a CEO, despite his inclusion on the list). Tech CEOs from Canon, Nvidia, Tencent and Salesforce.com also make the cut above Bezos.
You can see the full list over at the Harvard Business Review, along with a full profile of top-ranked Sørensen. It has some really fascinating charts breaking down the CEOs, looking at things like who has an MBAs (just over a quarter) and who also serves as chairman of the board (more than half).
