Age: 58
Education: B.S. in biology from Quinnipiac University
Previously: Has spent his entire career with Johnson & Johnson, including stints as worldwide franchise chairman, ethicon endo-surgery, and worldwide chairman, pharmaceuticals group
William Weldon leads Johnson & Johnson with tough-minded realism. “In today’s environment, it’s important that leaders have the courage to see things as they are,” he says. “They need courage to stand up and take a position.”
Such decisiveness was imperative this past July, when Weldon announced a large restructuring of Johnson & Johnson — including job cuts of more than 3 percent of the firm’s 120,500 employees — a necessary move, he believes, and one that might save the company more than $1.3 billion next year. It wasn’t an easy decision, but it earned him the respect of our survey respondents, who voted him the best CEO in the health-care sector. “Given the regulatory issues of his industry, his performance has been impressive,” says one Dealmaker reader who voted for Weldon. Other respondents cite his “great management of a legacy company” and “consistency in the delivery of the brand’s promise.”
Weldon’s approach to leadership has been honed throughout a career spent entirely at Johnson & Johnson. He joined one of the health-care giant’s pharmaceuticals subsidiaries just after finishing college in 1971 and climbed the ranks until becoming CEO — only the sixth chairman in the storied company’s 121-year history — in April 2002.
Since he took over the top spot, he has earned praise for the conglomerate’s steady sales and earnings growth, a notable feat for a company with a market cap in excess of $185 billion and a constant need for R&D, with drugs consistently coming off-patent. Earlier this year, he announced a large share-repurchase program of about $10 billion. “You’ve become a leader when you realize that you are really working for everyone else,” he says, “and they’re not just working for you.”
Upcoming Challenges:
The firm is expected to have some difficulty generating enough
sales from drugs in its pipelines to make up for the potential losses of expiring patents on Risperdal, a drug that treats mental illnesses, and Topamax, which treats migraines.
Executive Fact:
Weldon, who is married to his high-school sweetheart, was born
in Brooklyn. He played basketball in high school and remains so passionate about the sport that he is reported to have once insisted on using a basketball court for a Johnson & Johnson building.
We compiled our list of 100 CEOs by starting with several hundred of the largest American corporations in terms of annual revenues. We then divided the list into the 10 economic sectors used by Standard & Poor’s Global Industry Classification Standard, and determined that each should contain a minimum of five companies.
We culled the list to 100 firms after considering a variety of objective factors (revenues, earnings, market cap, returns, sustained excellence) in addition to other, more subjective reasons, and determined the final list by committee.
We then asked our readers to grade each company’s CEO on a scale that correlated to 1 through 6, whereby 1 = below average; 2 = average; 3 = good; 4 = very good; 5 = exceptional; and 6 = the very best. There was also a category for “do not recognize”; we strongly encouraged respondents to rank only those executives they closely track. Whoever received the highest average score in each sector was the winner.
We sent the survey to a proprietary list of 80,000 hedge-fund managers, professional traders, private-equity professionals and investment bankers, asking them to include their age, company and job title. The results are confidential, though we did ask respondents whether they would mind being contacted later for comments about their selections, some of which are printed here.
Furthermore, those surveyed were asked to name the most outstanding CEO in each sector, and why, and to list five retired CEOs they most admired and five new or up-and-coming CEOs to watch.
For executives who have been CEO for fewer than three months prior to the survey, which took place in late September, we listed both the company’s previous and new CEO.