Copyright © 2026 OyList. All Rights Reserved.
Share
Items13
1
James Sinegal
Born
Sinegal co-founded Costco and ran it until 2011, paying warehouse staff well above retail norms with health cover, and capping mark-ups at around 14 per cent even when analysts said he could charge more. Wall Street analysts openly complained that shareholders were losing out to employees and customers. Over the following decades Costco's low staff turnover and membership loyalty produced returns that comfortably beat most of the retailers those analysts preferred.
More about James Sinegal2
Warren Buffett
Born
Buffett never gave quarterly earnings guidance, refused to split Berkshire's A shares to attract traders, paid his managers on the results of their own businesses rather than the share price, and kept a huge cash reserve that looked lazy in boom years and decisive in crashes. The concrete test is 2008, when that cash let Berkshire lend to Goldman Sachs and General Electric on very favourable terms. The approach delivered over six decades.
More about Warren Buffett3
Jeff Bezos
Born
Bezos told Amazon's first shareholders in 1997 that the company would make decisions for long-term market leadership rather than short-term profit, and spent years reinvesting nearly everything, reporting thin or no profits while building warehouses and Amazon Web Services. Critics called it a business that would never earn money. AWS turned into Amazon's main profit engine, which is about as clear a delivery on a long-term promise as exists.
More about Jeff Bezos4
Larry Page
Born
Page and Sergey Brin's 2004 letter to prospective Google shareholders said plainly that the company would not give earnings guidance and would make long bets, and they used a dual-class share structure so outside investors could not force short-term choices. The structure is controversial because it limits shareholder say. The bets that followed, Android, YouTube and DeepMind, mostly paid off, while others under Alphabet's moonshot units cost billions without a business.
More about Larry Page5
Paul Polman
Born
On his first day as Unilever's chief executive in 2009, Polman scrapped quarterly earnings guidance and told hedge funds they were not welcome as shareholders. His Sustainable Living Plan tied the strategy to long-term goals, and in 2017 he fought off Kraft Heinz's takeover bid, which was built on cost-cutting. Unilever's returns under him were solid rather than spectacular, and after he left, investors pushed his successors back towards sharper financial targets.
More about Paul Polman6
Emmanuel Faber
Born
Faber made Danone the first listed French company to become an entreprise à mission in 2020, writing social and environmental goals into its articles with shareholder approval. Months later, with the share price lagging rivals, activist investors including Bluebell Capital and Artisan Partners pushed the board to remove him in 2021. He is on this list as the clearest cautionary case: the long-term commitment stayed, but its champion did not survive weak short-term numbers.
More about Emmanuel Faber7
Indra Nooyi
Born
Nooyi's Performance with Purpose strategy shifted PepsiCo's spending towards healthier products and away from relying on sugary drinks, which cost it market share in soft drinks for a while. In 2013 and 2014 she resisted the activist investor Nelson Peltz, who wanted the snacks and drinks businesses split. The company stayed whole, its healthier ranges grew, and shareholder returns over her twelve years were respectable, though not ahead of every rival.
More about Indra Nooyi8
Lars Rebien Sørensen
Born
Sørensen ran Novo Nordisk from 2000 to 2016 under a structure in which the Novo Nordisk Foundation controls the company's votes, shielding it from takeovers and activist pressure. He used that room to keep investing in diabetes and obesity research through lean years, groundwork for the GLP-1 drugs that later made Novo Europe's most valuable company for a time. Its more recent stumbles against Eli Lilly are a reminder that patient ownership does not guarantee good execution.
More about Lars Rebien Sørensen9
Jensen Huang
Born
From 2006 Huang kept Nvidia investing in CUDA, software that let its graphics chips run general scientific computing, for years before it earned much and while investors questioned the cost. When deep learning took off, researchers were already using CUDA, which is a large part of why Nvidia came to dominate AI chips. It is the best-documented case on this list of a long, expensive bet paying off spectacularly; he is still chief executive.
More about Jensen Huang10
Akio Toyoda
Born
After the 2009 to 2010 recall crisis, Toyoda told the US Congress that Toyota had grown too fast, and slowed expansion to rebuild quality. Later he resisted investor and campaigner pressure to go all-in on battery electric cars, keeping hybrids and hydrogen alongside them; strong hybrid demand in the mid-2020s brought record profits and vindicated much of that call. A certification-testing scandal at group companies in 2024 shows the quality culture still has gaps. He is chairman.
More about Akio Toyoda11
Jamie Dimon
Born
In 2018 Dimon and Warren Buffett co-wrote a Wall Street Journal article urging companies to stop giving quarterly earnings guidance, which they argued pushed managers to hold back investment to hit targets. JPMorgan itself does not give quarterly earnings forecasts and has kept investing heavily in technology through cycles. Few large companies followed the call, so the delivery on the wider promise has been limited.
More about Jamie Dimon12
Dominic Barton
Born
As global managing partner of McKinsey, Barton wrote the 2011 Harvard Business Review essay Capitalism for the Long Term and co-founded Focusing Capital on the Long Term, later FCLTGlobal, with large investors such as CPP Investments. It produced research showing long-term-oriented firms outperformed. The irony is that McKinsey itself faced scandals on his watch, so his record is better as an advocate than as an example.
More about Dominic Barton13
Larry Fink
Born
Fink's 2016 letter asked the chief executives of companies BlackRock owns to stop issuing quarterly guidance and instead publish long-term strategic plans, using the weight of the world's largest asset manager. The request carried force because BlackRock votes huge stakes. Its later push on climate drew a political backlash and was softened, which is a useful lesson in how hard it is for even the biggest shareholder to lengthen everyone's horizons.
More about Larry Fink
