Jim Balsillie Mike Lazaridis

Research in Motion, CEOs since 92

Bart Becht
Reckitt Benckiser, CEO since 99

Jeff Bezos
Amazon.com, CEO since 94

Why: Runs Europes best household-products company.

Why: His Kindle is rewriting the way we read.

Why: Started the BlackBerry obsession, now tangling with Apple.

he smartphone business is a no-limit poker game, with huge pots at stake and every player just one bad decision away Annualized Total Return One Year 72.5% from folding. No one plays it betWhile CEO 29.1% ter than Research in Motions BalS&P 500 0.3% sillie and Lazaridis. Palm is strug2010 P/ E 14.5 gling to survive. Motorola, after 5-Yr. Profit Growth 53.0% falling nearly to the point of no $200 return, has staked its turnaround RIMM / Nasdaq on Googles Android operating 150 $73 system. Sony Ericsson cant figure 100 out how to make a dent in the industry. Dell and Hewlett-Packard 50 are nonentities. Almost every 0 player fears Apple and its mighty 08 09 10 iPhone, which has forced a rethinking of hardware design and application distribution. But RIMs BlackBerry phones are still cranking out remarkable growth, thanks in part to steadfastly loyal corporate customers. For the year ended February 2010, RIM is expected to report revenue growth of 37%. BlackBerries have become popular with consumers, too,and RIM has huge room for growth outside North America. Its next big move: revising its core software to better compete with the iPhone. Eric J. Savitz

either Reckitt Benckiser nor its CEO, Bart Becht, has a high profile in the U.S., but the company has been cleaning up hereand around the worldfor Annualized Total Return many years. From Woolite and One Year 46.0% Lysol to Air Wick air fresheners While CEO 22.5% and Clearasil acne cream, its S&P 500 -0.5% brands are anything but obscure. 2010 P/ E 18.3 5-Yr. Profit Growth 19.8% Reckitt shareholders certainly know who Becht is. Hes the CEO 40 who has led the company to year RB / UK 35 after year of profit-margin and dividend increases. Earnings have 30 shot up from 200 million British 36 25 pounds in 1999 to 1.4 billion 20 (US$2.07 billion) last year. Along 09 10 the way, Becht has earned a repu- 08 tation for innovation and a savvy grasp of consumer needs. Becht is running a mini-Procter & Gamble; Reckitt makes everything from household and toiletry products to foods to pharmaceuticals. The big challenge right now is in the pharma division: a loss of up to 80% of the revenue from Suboxone, a key heroin-dependency drug thats recently gone through patent expiration. Still, Becht has been predicting another 5% rise in revenue this year, and a 10% jump in earnings. History suggests Bechts hints are a good bet. Vito J. Racanelli

eff Bezos has always been interested in anything that can be revolutionized by computers. That sentence is from Amazon.coms own biography of its founder and CEO. He used com- Annualized Total Return One Year 85.9% puters to change the way we While CEO 41.7% buy books, and now he is in the S&P 500 4.3% process of physically changing 2010 P/ E 44.8 5-Yr. Profit Growth 26.0% books themselvesagain, through the power of comput$150 AMZN / Nasdaq ers. Amazons Kindle e-reader is 120 the game-changer in 21st-cen$134 tury book publishing. Bezos is 90 sure to face stiff competition 60 from Steve Jobs upcoming iPad, 30 but the Kindle remains the first 08 09 10 truly popular e-book reader. Not content to rest on his laurels, Bezos is leveraging his companys core computer expertise to change the way companies run their technology departments. Amazon is already the leading provider of cloud servicescomputing power that is off-site from the user. Just as it did with bookselling, Amazon is stripping out costs; that makes it harder for chief technology officers everywhere to justify owning their own computers. Bezos may be a huge retailer, but hes also one of the very best computer visionaries. Mark Veverka

Warren Buffett
Berkshire Hathaway, CEO since 65

John Chambers
Cisco Systems, CEO since 95

Jamie Dimon
JPMorgan Chase, CEO since 06

Why: The fabled investor feasted

on the crisis.

Why: Finding new ways to keep a

giant growing.

Why: While Citi sleeps, Dimon delivers.

t a time in life when most CEOs are deep into retirement, Warren Buffett, 79 years old, is at the top of his game. Berkshire Hathaway is coming Annualized Total Return off its best year ever, thanks in One Year 44.3% part to more than $20 billion of While CEO 21.9% shrewd investments made by BufS&P 500 9.3% fett during the financial crisis. One 2010 P/ E 22.7 5-Yr. Profit Growth 12.0% great buy: $5 billion of juicy 10% preferred stock in Goldman Sachs (Thou) $180 BRKA / NYSE with valuable stock warrants. 150 After badly trailing the Standard & Poors 500 last year, Berk120 shire shares have perked up in 90 2010, rising 24%. With a market $123 60 capitalization of more than $200 08 09 10 billion, the company is dueling with Apple and Wal-Mart Stores as the third most valuable company in the U.S. stock market behind ExxonMobil and Microsoft. When Buffett took charge in 1965, the market cap was just $20 million. Buffett keeps doing things his way. He hates meetings and delegates the running of Berkshires 60-plus subsidiaries to trusted managers. He eats like a kid, snacking on Fritos and Cheetos, made by PepsiCo. A longtime investor in Coca-Cola, Buffett makes sure to wash them down with a Coke. Andrew Bary

ohn Chambers doesnt sit still. A devoted runner and habitual consumer of Diet Coke, he first built Cisco into the undisputed champ in networking gear, then branched into a bunch of re- Annualized Total Return One Year 61.1% lated businesses to keep the comWhile CEO 18.6% pany firmly in the growth colS&P 500 8.0% umn. 2010 P/ E 16.3 5-Yr. Profit Growth 10.0% He has made big bets on consumer Wi-Fi, cable set-top boxes $35 CSCO / Nasdaq and video conferencing. And this past year, Chambers rocked the 25 business computing world by in$26 troducing Ciscos first line of en15 terprise-computer servers, taking aim at Hewlett Packard, one of its 5 08 09 10 partners. Earlier this year, Cisco unveiled its own line of propietary computer servers aimed at winning more business from corporate data centers. Joining forces with Intel for chips, EMC for storage and VMware for virtualization software (EMC controls 98% of VMwares voting stock), Chambers tapped the best in their fields to help carry out his aspirations in computing. The partners better be prepared to hustle if they hope to keep up with Chambers. M.V.

n Jan. 1, 2006, in flush times for the economy and the markets, Jamie Dimon assumed the CEO title of JPMorgan Chase, one of the five largest U.S. Annualized Total Return banks. One Year 75.1% Of the four others, one While CEO 4.8% Wachoviais gone, sold under S&P 500 -0.2% stress to another, Wells Fargo. 2010 P/ E 14.4 5-Yr. Profit Growth -16.0% Citigroup answers to Uncle Sam, its largest shareholder. Bank of $60 JPM / NYSE America swallowed Merrill Lynch, 40 and immediately had diners remorse. None of those four banks $44 20 is now run by the same CEO who held the office the day Dimon be0 came CEO, and JPMorgan shares 09 10 08 have far outpaced the performance of its then-peers. Dimon managed to keep his perspective though it all. That was clear in his now-famous line to Congress, relating his answer to his daughters query about what a financial crisis was: Its something that happens every five to seven years. Dimon scored some gains of a lifetime: He absorbed the remains of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, grabbed market share from Wall Street rivals and made his bank even stronger than it was when he arrived. Michael Santoli

Bloomberg News; courtesy of Reckitt Benckiser