There are a lot of things you can aspire to in the business world, what exactly one is working for is entirely up to you. In a cutthroat world, it is also important to know why you are aiming for what you are aiming for? In this article, we will give you a blueprint of business stalwarts and what they stand for so that you know exactly what it takes for a successful business CEO to get ahead and what it is that you are aiming for.
A little recap in 2013 about 23% of fortune 500 companies executives were terminated for different reasons, many CEOs are often shamed and blamed for devious schemes and selfish scandals. We have a list of 11 famous international CEOs, their good, bad, and evil for you to know what it takes to be an international business head.
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Top 11 International Business Men: Famous CEOs in International Business
Here is a list of famous CEOs in international business, with details about their net worth and annual income.
1. Elon Musk
Net Worth– 230 Billion
Annual Income– $185 Billion
Coming from generational wealth, Elon Musk is the Tech bro everyone wants to be. Elon Musk is the CEO and Product Architect of Tesla. He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before he moved to Canada at age 17 after which he transferred to Queen’s University of Pennsylvania. After which he moved to Stanford University in 1995 but eventually decided to pursue a career in business. He co-founded a web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal and the same year he also co-founded online bank X.com. A fun fact about the latter company is that it merged with Confinity in early 2000 and ended up forming PayPal, in 2002 eBay bought this company for $1.5 billion. In 2002 Elon Musk founded SpaceX and then eventually Tesla. Musk has been criticized for having unscientific and highly polarizing opinions. He has been sued multiple times for defamation and false tweeting. Lately, he also spread misinformation about Covid-19 and received a lot of flak from experts.
2. Jeffrey Bezos
Net Worth-$211 Billion
Annual Income– $1.6 Million
No one is unaware of this extraordinary e-commerce business stalwart, Bezos is an alumnus of Princeton University with a B.S degree in engineering and computer science, he was in the class of 1986. He then worked in Wall Street in the hedge fund department which happens to be quite a profitable business. In the ’90s the internet happened and he got more and more interested in it. He started amazon.com from his garage and we cut to 2015 where he is making 100 billion in revenue, pretty cool for someone who started in his garage right? He went out to buy the Washington Post and also started a spaceflight company that goes by the name of Blue Origin. He is also named as the world’s worst boss and his company has been linked to scandals like tax avoidance, copyright infringement and not being able to pay his workers. The company has been criticized for how badly the workers are treated here.
3. Mark Zuckerberg
Net Worth– $124 billion
Annual Income–$23.4 million
Zuckerberg is famous for being one of the youngest CEOs of the international media platform Facebook. He grew up in White Plain, New York, and went to Harvard University to get a degree in Computer Science. In 2004, he started his company Facebook just so he could stalk his college ex-girlfriend. This was followed by his college seniors suing him for stealing the idea of Facebook which was initially called HarvardConnection. The three gentlemen got their $300 million settlement that gave them 1.2 million Facebook shares. Zuckerberg ended up working on Facebook full-time after dropping out of Harvard. Facebook users grew up to 1 million users. The conflict of Facebook was portrayed in Aroon Sorkin’s film “The Social Network”.
4. Bill Gates
Net Worth– $126.3 Billion
Annual Income– $4 Billion
One of the oldest names in the Forbes billionaire lists has to be Bill Gates. He happens to be one of the richest men on the planet for the longest time. He grew up in Seattle, he showed the skillset to be an aggressive businessman in the high-tech innovation industry. He and his high school classmate Paul Allen managed to develop his first software named Traf-o-Data. In 1975 he dropped out of Harvard University to form Microsoft with Allen. The company had 25 employees and it had a bumpy ride in the beginning but it expanded quite exponentially and ended up with a gross amount of $2.5 million in 1979. Even though he is considered the pioneer of the tech industry he faced 35 patent infringement lawsuits.
5. Michael Bloomberg
Net Worth– $55.5 Billion
Annual Income– $10 Billion
Bloomberg happens to be one of the most notable CEOs on the Forbes list; he is ranked 8th. He was born and brought up in Boston and went to John Hopkins to get a B.S in electrical engineering from the prestigious JOhm Hopkins in the year 1964. Two years later he went to Harvard Business School to pursue his MBA. After which he began working at a Wall Street Investment Bank called the Salomon Brothers. He then used his $10 million severance package to start his firm. In 1982, Merrill Lynch invested $30 million in his company. He eventually left the designation of CEO to be the mayor of New York City in the year 2002. He launched the “Bloomberg BusinessWeek” and also the Bloomberg Tradebook.
6. Frederick W. Smith
Net Worth– $3.36 Billion
Annual Income– $11.13 Million
If you have heard of FedEx then you have heard of Frederick W.Smith. FedEx is a global courier company that has $14.9 billion equity. He grew up with a mother in Mark, Mississippi who was a widow. He was crippled with a bone disease after he was better he joined Yale University in the year 1962. In his economics class, he wrote a business plan for an overnight delivery service and earned a “C” he went on to turn that business plan into a reality after three years that he was done serving in the U.S Marine Corps. He raised $91 million in venture capital and ended up starting Federal; Express by the year 1973, it started by delivering small packages to just 25 cities. This venture went international with over 300,000 employees. He was placed as the 26th “World’s Greatest Leaders” by Fortune magazine.
7. Warren Buffett
Net Worth– $100 Billion
Annual Income– $101 Billion
Warren Buffet happens to be one of the most successful business leaders that there is in the world. He grew up in Nebraska, started with a few of his entrepreneurial ventures that ranged from paper routes to car detailing. When he was 19, he had graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a degree of BSBA. He was rejected by Harvard, he went on to get a master of Science in Economics from Columbia. He started as a securities analyst from Graham-Newman Corp. eventually he formed Buffett Partnership Ltd. He was a billionaire by 1962, he then became the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Warren went on to buy companies like Dairy Queen, Kraft Heinz, and Geico. He has made it to the list of most influential people in TIME’s Magazine.
8. Howard Schultz
Net Worth– $3 Billion
Annual Income– $4.9 Million
He is one of the most well-known people in the world of the coffee business, Howard is considered one of the most outspoken global CEOs for the extremely famous coffeehouse chain called Starbucks. He was born into an economically poor family in Brooklyn. He was a first-generation college student at the University of Northern Michigan, he got his B.A in communications in 1975 after which he worked as a Xerox salesman. On one of his business trips, he entered a coffeehouse called Starbucks and one cup ended up changing his life. He then joined as the Director of Marketing. He then began expanding the four-story company. The man became the CEO by 2008 and the coffeehouse began to grow, it ended up growing to 23,000 stores in 73 nations. He is celebrated for creating the Starbucks College Achievement Plan and creating the jobs for the USA initiative. He was the businessman of the year in 2011 in Fortune magazine.
9. Mary Barra
Net Worth– $60 Million
Annual Income-$23.6 Million
The world of business happens to be quite male-dominated and in this list, the patriarchal world of business stands out Mary Barra. She is one of the most famous female entrepreneurs. She was fifth in the “world’s most powerful women” list by Forbes. She studied electrical engineering at Kettering University, she then earned a general motors fellowship at Stanford in the year 1988. Then she became the manager of the company’s Detroit assembly plant and from that point on she began climbing the ladder. In 2011, she then became the VP of Global Product to redesign GM’s automobile platforms. She then became the CEO in 2014, she was the first CEO for an international automobile company. Her work has been criticized for having GM issue 84 recalls which involve 30 million cars.
10. Martin Shkreli
Net Worth– $27 Million
Annual Income– No information about this since he got convicted.
One of the most hated CEOs is Martin Shkreli, the 33-year-old co-founder of Turning Pharmaceuticals. He grew up in a working-class family in Brooklyn, New York. he got a bachelor’s in business administration from CUNY Baruch College in the year 2005. He was a Hedge fund analyst who worked initially at Cramer, Berkowitz & Co. He had a hunch that the stock would gall and eventually he ended up founding Retrophin in 2011 which he left four years later to start another company Turing pharmaceutical. This is where he was critiqued for hiking the price for important drugs, one of them going up to $750 per pill. The price is still there, however, he has been in trouble with the FBI since December 2015. He was charged with fraud concerning running a Ponzi scheme.
11. Donald Trump
Net Worth– $3.1 Billion
Annual Income– $362 Million
The disgraced ex-president still happens to be one of the most infamous CEOs. It began with a degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in the year 1968. Seven long years later he took over his father’s construction company and named it the Trump Organization. He then fingered a couple of casinos and hotel deals which included New York’s Plaza Hotel. He ended up declaring bankruptcy due to all of the mismanaged deals, while shying away from the IRS he started Trump University which was also sued for misleading practices. He then lost his NBC show after he disrespected the Mexican immigrants which during his presidency was considered on brand.
Conclusion
These were some of the lessons for you to learn from. One must focus on the lessons more than the numbers. One staple of all great international businesses and businessmen is their understanding of the importance of certified translation services for important documents and information.
