Items21The creator’s order
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Lee IacoccaBorn 15 Oct 1924Iacocca joined Chrysler in 1978 after Ford fired him, and found a company heading for bankruptcy. He won 1.5 billion dollars of federal loan guarantees in 1979, cut his own salary to one dollar, closed plants and squeezed concessions from workers and suppliers. The K-car platform and then the…0i - 2
Lou GerstnerBorn 1 Mar 1942IBM lost about eight billion dollars in 1993, the year Gerstner arrived from RJR Nabisco, and the plan was to break it into separate companies. He kept it whole, arguing that customers wanted one supplier to integrate everything, built up IT services, cut costs and sold off assets, and returned it…0i - 3
Gordon BethuneBorn 29 Aug 1941Continental Airlines had been through two bankruptcies and ranked at the bottom for punctuality when Bethune, a former Boeing executive and mechanic, took charge in 1994. The fix was operational: paying every employee a bonus each month the airline finished in the top five for on-time arrivals,…0 - 4
Archie NormanBorn 1 May 1954Asda was near collapse with heavy debts in 1991 when Norman arrived from Kingfisher. With his deputy Allan Leighton he cut head office, sold non-core businesses, refocused on everyday low prices for family shoppers and encouraged store staff to speak up. The share price rose many times over, and…0i - 5
Michael O'Leary (businessman)Born 20 Mar 1961Ryanair was a small, loss-making Irish airline when O'Leary, then the owners' financial adviser, was sent to study Southwest Airlines in the early 1990s. He copied its model hard: one aircraft type, secondary airports, quick turnarounds and fees for everything extra, and became chief executive in…0i - 6
Steve JobsBorn 24 Feb 1955Apple was about ninety days from running out of cash, by Jobs's own later account, when he returned in 1997. The concrete moves are what matter here: cutting the product range to four computers, a 150 million dollar investment and software deal with Microsoft, and the iMac in 1998, which returned…0i - 7
Carlos GhosnBorn 9 Mar 1954Renault sent Ghosn to Nissan in 1999 when it was deep in debt and losing money. His Nissan Revival Plan closed five Japanese plants, cut around 21,000 jobs, broke up the supplier keiretsu and refreshed the model range, and Nissan returned to profit within a year and cleared its car-business debt…0i - 8
Anne M. MulcahyBorn 21 Oct 1952Mulcahy became Xerox's chief executive in 2001, when it had billions in debt, an accounting investigation and advisers urging bankruptcy. A long-serving insider, she refused bankruptcy, cut costs and nearly a third of jobs, sold assets but protected research spending, and spent much of her time…0 - 9
Justin King (businessman)Born 17 May 1961Sainsbury's had lost its long-held first place to Tesco and was posting its first ever loss when King arrived from Marks & Spencer's food business in 2004. His three-year recovery plan focused on the basics, getting products on shelves through a broken new IT and depot system, cutting prices and…0 - 10
Jørgen Vig KnudstorpBorn 21 Nov 1968Lego was losing heavily and weeks from breaching its banking terms when Knudstorp, a former McKinsey consultant, became chief executive in 2004. He cut the number of unique parts dramatically, sold the Legoland parks, outsourced some production and refocused on the core brick and its fans,…0i
