Oil and gas driller OGX – the flagship of Batista’s five public companies under EBX – is just about bankrupt, as is his shipbuilding firm OSX which sadly had only OGX as a customer.

Batista’s biggest problem is that the ‘massive’ oil and gas body he planned on drilling turned out to be pretty unimpressive.

Although Batista is actually the chairman of EBX and doesn’t hold official CEO titles, he was the “driving force” behind the firms, Finkelstein writes.

Finkelstein calls Batista’s empire “little more than a house of cards.”

“In the end, Eike Batista was more a master salesman — he cut his teeth knocking on doors selling insurance — than a master leader. He just didn’t have the ability to lead and manage a complex business,” the Professor writes.

But don’t feel too bad for him. The 57-year-old is still multimillionaire and he didn’t make every worst-CEO list. The Motley Fool released its worst CEOs of the year list last week and Batista isn’t mentioned once.

See why Eike Batista is the worst CEO of 2013 according to Professor Finkelstein