You’ve heard the stereotype before—lawyers have no business in business. They are too risk-adverse to make bold decisions, too cultured in the ways of the billable hour to move efficiently, and too numbers-phobic to understand the bottom-line. In short, lawyers don’t make good CEOs and have no shot at ever making F.U. money.
But the truth is that lawyers do run some of the world’s biggest companies, Spencer Stuart, an executive search firm, told Bitter Lawyer that about seven percent of CEOs at large, publicly traded companies (S&P 500) have a legal background and worked in law. Of all S&P 500 CEOs in 2008, 67% have earned some type of advanced degree, and of that percentage, 35% are JDs.
While you might not know all the names on this list, you’ll certainly know the companies whose boards were smart enough to count a JD as an asset rather than a liability when naming a CEO.
1. The Burger King of Cool
Name: John Chidsey
Age: 46
Company: Burger King Corporation [NYSE:BKC]
2009 Fortune Ranking: 790
Law School: Emory University
Total Compensation: $5,370,781 [Forbes]
What He’s Done Lately: “While competitors like McDonald’s blanketed the market with dollar deals this spring, Burger King stuck with ads that wooed its male ‘superfans’—and alienated thousands of parents. And sales in April alone show the results: a 7 percent rise for McDonald’s as Burger King revenues remained weak in many markets after a dramatic fall in March. ‘That caught us a bit off guard,’ admits Chidsey.” [BusinessWeek]
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2. The Delinquency Stabilizer
Name: Kenneth Chenault
Age: 57
Company: American Express Company [NYSE:AXP]
2009 Fortune Ranking: 74
Law School: Harvard Law School
Total Compensation: $42,800,000 [CNN Money]
What He’s Done Lately: “In a year that has shaken faith in the business model of financial conglomerates such as Citigroup, Kenneth Chenault, chief executive of American Express, could be forgiven for feeling a little vindicated. The credit card company used to look a lot more like Citigroup than it does today. In the 1980s it was a financial supermarket, owning Lehman Brothers as well as retail brokerage and asset management divisions. Yet American Express shed its non-core operations in the early 1990s to become a “more focused company,” Mr. Chenault told the Financial Times. This, he suggests, helped it avoid the recent trouble that blighted its peers.” [Financial Times]
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3. The Stick-Around
Name: John Chambers
Age: 59
Company: Cisco Systems, Inc. [NASDAQ:CSCO]
2009 Fortune Ranking: 57
Law School: West Virginia
Total Compensation: $18,767,149 [Equilar]
What He’s Done Lately: “Chambers is betting big that Cisco can capitalize on such opportunities. While many companies retrench, the tech giant has strong profits and $33 billion in cash in its coffers. More important, in Chambers’ eyes, is Cisco’s position as the dominant provider of the networking gear that runs the Internet. Just as the tech world revolved around IBM (IBM)’s mainframe computers in the 1970s and Microsoft (MSFT)-powered personal computers in the 1980s and ‘90s, Chambers believes Cisco has an opportunity now to make its digital networks the platform on which new innovations are built. ‘There’s an inflection point happening,’ he says. ‘Cisco and the network are at the center of it.’” [BusinessWeek]
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4. The Gut Renovator
Name: Frank Blake
Age: 60
Company: The Home Depot, Inc. [NYSE:HD]
2009 Fortune Ranking: 25
Law School: Columbia
Total Compensation: $8,584,167 [Fox Business]
What He’s Done Lately: “After three years, the ghost of Robert Nardelli still looms large at The Home Depot Inc. At Thursday’s annual meeting, shareholders never actually mentioned Nardelli by name. Yet he was referred to by shareholders a half dozen times, mostly as a benchmark of what went wrong during his five years as CEO—and how the company has improved under the leadership of current CEO Frank Blake.” [The Atlanta Business Chronicle]
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5. The Crisis Non-Waster
Name: C. Robert Henrikson
Age: 61
Company: MetLife, Inc. [NYSE:MET]
2009 Fortune Ranking: 39
Law School: Emory University
Total Compensation: $8,030,000 [Forbes]
What He’s Done Lately: “MetLife Inc. Chief Executive Officer Robert Henrikson promised not to ‘waste a crisis’ as the biggest U.S. life insurer seeks to win business from hobbled rivals and expand in markets including Japan. ‘This is a time to extend our lead,’ Henrikson told investors today at a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. conference in New York. Henrikson said his ‘biggest concern’ was not taking advantage of opportunities.” [Bloomberg]
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6. The Bachelor
Name: Sumner Redstone
Age: 86
Company: National Amusements, Inc. (Viacom and CBS Corporation parent)
2009 Fortune Ranking: Viacom = 177, CBS = 186
Law School: Harvard Law
Total Compensation: $12,085,167 [Forbes]
What He’s Done Lately: “…Sumner Redstone’s latest buffoonish public performance—during an interview with famed softball questioner Larry King at the Milken Institute Global Conference—you’d have to wonder how much longer Viacom insiders can put off a stockholders’ revolt. I know that if I’d been a stockholder on hand, watching Redstone once again embarrass himself, I’d be putting in a sell call as fast as I could.” [Los Angeles Times]
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7. The Cellphone Pragmatist
Name: Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo
Age: 55
Company: Nokia [NYSE:NOK]
2009 Fortune Ranking: 42 (Most Admired Company)
Law School: University of Helsinki (Master of Legal Letters degree)
Total Compensation: €3,927,127 [Reuters]
What He’s Done Lately: “Nokia’s CEO showed off a device on Wednesday that looked every bit as sexy as something from Apple, Palm, or Research In Motion. The N97 has a large touch screen, built-in cameras, a text-to-speech reader, FM transmitter, 32GB of built-in memory, mapping, and all other kinds of bells and whistles. The biggest problem, at least for people in the U.S., is that like many Nokia phones, the N97 will only be sold here separate from phone service. That means it is sold unsubsidized, in this case with a $699 sticker price. However, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told the D: All Things Digital crowd that his company is in talks with U.S. carriers in hopes of being able to offer the phone at a lower price.” [CNET]
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8. The Big Piano Saver
Name: Gerald L. (Jerry) Storch
Age: 52
Company: Toys “R” Us, Inc.
2009 Fortune Ranking: 192
Law School: Harvard Law
Total Compensation: Unknown
What He’s Done Lately: “Toys “R” Us announced early Thursday that it had bought F. A. O. Schwarz, one of the oldest toy retailers in the nation and a staple on Fifth Avenue, where the flagship store is guarded by rosy-cheeked toy soldiers. ‘At its core this is about one of the world’s greatest brands,’ Gerald L. Storch, chairman and chief executive of Toys “R” Us, said in an interview on Wednesday after the deal was completed. ‘It’s a store that’s steeped in tradition as well as popular culture.’ Mr. Storch declined to say how much Toys “R” Us, the ubiquitous toy and baby supplies store, paid for F. A. O. Schwarz, a privately owned company he had wanted to acquire for several years.” [The New York Times]
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9. The Free-Love Pill Provider
Name: Jeffrey Kindler
Age: 53
Company: Pfizer, Inc. [NYSE:PFE]
2009 Fortune Ranking: 46
Law School: Harvard Law School
Total Compensation: $14,788,302 [Equilar]
What He’s Done Lately: “Pfizer Chairman and CEO Jeff Kindler last year repeatedly said big deals in big pharma don’t work. But, he added, he’d never say never. And sure enough, this year Kindler’s buying Wyeth.” [CNBC]
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10. The Woman to Watch
Name: Angela F. Braly
Age: 47
Company: WellPoint, Inc. [NYSE:WLP]
2009 Fortune Ranking: 32
Law School: Southern Methodist University
Total Compensation: $8,700,000 [Yahoo! Finance]
What She’s Done Lately: Aside from Braly currently being one of 3 women to run a Fortune 50 company—and one of only 15 to run a company in the Fortune 500—she’s also the fourth most-powerful woman in the world. As for WellPoint? Well, “WellPoint agreed to sell its pharmacy benefits management business for $4.68 billion to Express Scripts, which will gain 25 million WellPoint members.” [Fortune]
Check out other lists, tallies and scores to settle in Bitter by Numbers.
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