Miners who made Harvard’s best-performing CEO list

Michael Allan McCrae | October 14, 2015 | 1:11 am Precious Metals Africa Gold

Creative Commons image from MoBikeFed

Leaders from First Quantum and Randgold Resources made Harvard’s list of best-performing CEOs in the world.

The highest-ranked mining CEO was Randgold Resources’ Mark Bistrow at 49th spot. First Quantum’s Philip Pascal was at 96th spot.

Number one overall was Lars Sorensen. His company, Novo Nordisk, makes diabetes treatment.

Some industrial suppliers were on the list. Highest up was Alexander Cutler at 19th spot. Cutler is CEO of the power management company Eaton, which has a mining division. Atlas Copco’s CEO Ronnie Lenten was at 31st spot.

The list was compiled looking at three financial metrics: country-adjusted total shareholder return, industry-adjusted total shareholder return and change in market capitalization. A sustainability metric was also added to this year’s mix, which tweaked the results:

We’ve added to the mix a measurement of each company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. For this we relied on the calculations of the investment research firm Sustainalytics. We now weight long-term financial results at 80% and ESG performance at 20%.

As a result of these shifts, the 2015 list is very different from last year’s. On the purely financial metrics, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos leads all other CEOs—just as he did last year. But Amazon’s relatively poor ESG score drags Bezos down to #87 overall. Sørensen finished sixth in overall financial performance; that, combined with a relatively high ESG rating, earned him this year’s top slot.