Quotes About CEOs

I am far more a fan of aggressive entrepreneurs than I am of major CEOs. You look at major CEOs, and they are almost to a person quite timid. They don't act to defend the free market principles that are vital to growth.

The voting public is not very good at attributing credit and blame to presidents. They get too much credit when things go well and too much blame when things go badly. The same applies to coaches, C.E.O.'s, parents, and anyone else in charge.

Once America's CEOs get back to the business of growing their companies rather than growing their share prices, shareholder value will take care of itself, and all Americans will share in the higher wages and other benefits of a renewed era of economic growth.

I've talked to several CEOs - from a recycling company in Indiana, a furniture company in Kentucky, a brewing company in Colorado, and more - who believe paying higher wages is both the right thing to do and part of a successful business model.

If you want to think of a company as a system, design the system to benefit all. So how can you raise wages, increase training, and reduce carbon, and provide low-prices? We believe that it's possible to deliver, and I find a lot of other likeminded CEOs, as it relates to thinking that way.

My feminist values are rooted in my socialist values. The number of women CEOs in Britain's biggest companies is irrelevant if they pay their women workers poverty wages or discriminate against black employees.

We find that firms with award-winning CEOs subsequently underperform, in terms both of stock and of operating performance. At the same time, CEO compensation increases, CEOs spend more time on activities outside the company such as writing books and sitting on outside boards, and they are more likely to engage in earnings management.

common thread of boldness and optimism links businesspeople, from motel owners to superstar CEOs.

CEOs do influence performance, but the effects are much smaller than a reading of the business press suggests.

When we asked 828 CEOs and senior executives from a variety of industries how much variation they expected to find in similar expert judgments, 10% was also the median answer and the most frequent one (the second most popular was 15%). A 10% difference would mean, for instance, that one of the two underwriters set a premium of $9,500 while the other quoted $10,500. Not a negligible difference, but one that an organization can be expected to tolerate.

I think very few people still understand the distinction between CEOs on Wall Street and the hedge-fund billionaires operating separately.

Greed has increasingly become a virtue among Wall Street bankers and corporate CEOs in the U.S. Nowhere else in the world do CEOs insist on receiving compensation as high compared to what their employees earn.

The Fed has got to become a more democratic institution that is responsive to the needs of the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs.

CEOs are also chief capital allocators. This is a point Warren Buffett has repeatedly made: that the role management plays in allocating capital across businesses and boosting returns on that capital is a critical yet poorly recognized one.

I seek out a lot of advice from other CEOs.

CEOs make hard decisions; sometimes, the least worst is the right one.

I know CEOs, and they get sick when they have to lay people off, especially around Christmas.

The proportion of CEOs who came from wealthy families had dropped from almost half in 1900 and a third in 1950 to 5.5 percent by 1976.23 The CEO of 1976 was still disproportionately likely to be Episcopalian but much less so than in 1900—and by 1976 he was also disproportionately likely to be Jewish, unheard of in 1920 or earlier. In short, social and economic background was no longer nearly as important in 1976 as in the first half of the century. Educational

Money often determines not only who gets elected, but what gets done. Which voices do lawmakers listen to, the banks or home owners, coal companies, or asthma sufferers, the CEOs or the unemployed?

CEOs need to produce continuous growth in sales and profits. Yet they must also invest in sustainability and social responsibility, which then leave them less money for financing their growth.

The helicopter is a fine way to travel, but it induces a view of the world that only God and CEOs share on a regular basis.

Where visionaries can be good at persuasion, CEOs are good at wielding authority. Visionaries transcend organizations, resources, and current realities, while CEOs master them.

We have a history of wanting our leaders to be taller than average. That's probably because in ancient times everyone thought that tall leaders could see farther. We still want leaders to see far enough to tell us which way to go. But many CEOs fail.

I grew up watching my mom and dad selling rooms in our motels. We had CEOs coming to our house so that my dad could persuade them to have their executives stay in Hyatt hotels.