Tech CEOs Rule

TechFlash reports: Apple's Steve Jobs, Cisco's John Chambers and Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos are among the best-performing CEOs in the world, according to a study released this week by the Harvard Business Review.

Jobs ranked number one, while Chambers came in fourth and Bezos ranked seventh. But one of the big names in the tech industry was noticeably absent: Microsoft's Steve Ballmer.

The Harvard researchers came up with the rankings of the top 100 CEOs by looking at total shareholder return of 1,999 executives. It only studied those CEOs who held the position no earlier than January 1995 and no later than December 2007, knocking out execs such as Larry Ellison, Bill Gates and Jack Welch.

Just how good were those at the top? Here's an explanation from Harvard Business Review:

As a leader, you had to produce remarkable performance to make it into our top 50. On average, those CEOs delivered a total shareholder return of 997% (adjusted for exchange-rate effects) during their time in office. That translates into a spectacular annual return of 32%. Subtracting industry effects, the annual return is 30%, and country effects, it’s 29%. On average the top 50 increased the wealth of their companies’ shareholders by $48.2 billion (adjusted for inflation, dividends, share repurchases, and share issues). Now compare that with the average performance of the 50 CEOs at the bottom of the full list of 1,999, who during their tenures produced a total shareholder return of -70%, which corresponds to an annual return of -20%. On average these poor performers presided over a loss of $18.3 billion in shareholder value.

But just considering those industry-adjusted returns, Bezos actually performed better than everyone else. According to the report, he led Amazon to an industry-adjusted return of 4,586 percent.

That compared to Jobs, who had a 3,188 percent industry-adjusted return at Apple. Chambers wasn't too shabby either, with a return of 1,054 percent.

And while Bezos beat out Jobs in terms of industry-adjusted returns, Jobs outdid him in terms of market capitalization change. Apple saw a market cap change of $150 billion for the period studied, versus Amazon.com's $37 billion change.

Amazingly, only one female CEO -- former eBay CEO Meg Whitman -- made the list of the top 100.

You can view a slide show of the top 100 CEOs here.