Robert Nardelli
No second acts in American life? Nonsense. Just look at corporate America, where some of the best-known executives have at one point or another suffered a very public firing. The latest example: Nardelli. Once a failed candidate to succeed Jack Welch at General Electric, he was forced out of Home Depot in January, criticized for excess pay and poor performance. Now he's C.E.O. of the newly private Chrysler Corp.
Steve Jobs
Having built Apple Computer, Jobs brought in John Scully as C.E.O. in 1983, then introduced the first of the revolutionary Macs. He was on top of the world. By May 1985, he was out in the cold. Clashes with Scully and others triggered a boardroom putsch. Jobs went off to found NeXT Computer and then Pixar Animation before returning to revive a moribund Apple.
Bernard Marcus
A long career in retailing led Marcus to the corner office at Handy Dan, a Los Angeles- based hardware store chain. A clash with the company's owner cost him his job in 1978. He rebounded quickly, founding The Home Depot a year later with the help of former Handy Dan colleague Arthur Blank and the money raised by New York investment banker Ken Langone. He retired a billionaire in 2002.
Jamie Dimon
When he crashed, Jamie Dimon fell far. He and mentor Sandy Weill had transformed a little-known consumer finance company into financial services giant Citigroup. Dimon was anointed president in 1998, only to be fired — by Weill, no less — a few months later. Dimon has since climbed back to become C.E.O. of J.P. Morgan Chase — and is now challenging Citigroup.
John Mack
A lifer at Morgan Stanley, Mack rose to president after 30 years. Then came a bitter power struggle with Phil Purcell of Dean Witter after it merged with Morgan Stanley; Mack lost in 2001. He jumped to Credit Suisse, where he slashed 10,000 jobs, cementing his reputation as “Mack the Knife." After Purcell stumbled, Mack returned to Morgan Stanley in 2005.
John Bogle
After losing his job due to a merger gone awry, this former Wellington Management C.E.O. bounced right back, opening the Vanguard Group of Investment companies in 1975. Today Vanguard manages more than $520 billion in mutual funds, including the Wellington Fund, operated by Bogle’s former employers. It is the world’s largest pure no-load mutual fund company.
Jeffrey Katzenberg
When Disney C.E.O. Michael Eisner wouldn’t promote him to president — after a decade as head of Disney Studios — Katzenberg quit the Walt Disney Company in 1993. He quickly teamed with Stephen Spielberg and David Geffen to found DreamWorks SKG. In 1999, Disney settled a three-year lawsuit by paying Katzenberg millions of dollars in compensation he said he had earned.
Robert C. Stempel
Once ousted by the board at General Motors, Stempel joined Energy Conversion Devices as C.E.O. in 1995. During his tenure, he oversaw the construction of a 170,000 square-foot plant and commercialized the company’s nickel- metal hydride battery. He has been awarded the Golden Omega Award and the Soichiro Honda Medal Award for significant contributions in his field.
Bernd Pischetsrieder
His 1994 decision to have BMW buy Rover ultimately cost Pischetsrieder his job when he was unable to turn around the failing British carmaker. Although the deal gave BMW the popular Mini car, BMW's board fired him in 1999. He resurfaced in 2002 as chairman of Volkswagen, where he raised the images of VW and Audi, but not their sales. He retired at the end of 2006 and is now chairman of Scania AB.
Tom Stemberg
Having been fired from his top post at First National Supermarkets’ Edwards-Finast division when it sold in 1985, Harvard Business School grad Stemberg quickly made the best of his would-be humiliating career defeat—by founding office supplies mega-chain Staples, where he remained C.E.O. until 2002. He is currently managing general partner at Highland Capital.
Mickey Drexler
Having built the jeans-and-T-shirt store The Gap into the global casual wear behemoth Gap Inc., Drexler fell victim to his own success. Gap had grown bureaucratic and unwieldy, while nimble copycat competitors were able to keep abreast of fashions, especially for free-spending teens and young adults. Gap forced him out in 2002, and he jumped to J. Crew, where he has started the brand-building process anew.
David Neeleman
As deregulation transformed the airline industry, Neeleman took advantage, cofounding low-cost carrier Morris Air in Salt Lake City. As entrepreneurship gave way to a round of consolidation, he sold Morris to Southwest Airlines in 1993 and briefly worked for that company. After brief stints working for an airline information technology firm and then the airline WestJet, he founded JetBlue, which began flying in 2000.
Carl Bass
Bass arrived at Autodesk in 1993, when it bought his computer graphics company, Ithaca Software. It wasn't a good fit: He spent a lot of time telling C.E.O. Carol Bartz what was wrong with her company. She finally asked if he'd ever be happy; he said no, and she fired him. He soon returned, chastened. Last year, he succeeded Bartz when she retired.
Michael Bloomberg
When he was fired from Salomon Brothers in 1981, Bloomberg bought his wife a sable jacket so she wouldn’t be ashamed of their reduced circumstances. Instead of resting on his $10 million severance, he got to work developing data machines that serve some 75,000 trading rooms around the world. He’s now mayor of New York, and worth about $20 billion.
