The WORLD'S 50 BIGGEST INDUSTRIAL CEOs They share awesome power, strong personalities, and the belief that they must delegate, communicate, plan -- and restructure.
By - Terence Pare and Wilton Woods

(FORTUNE Magazine) – THE MEN on the following pages -- and yes, they are all men -- wield awesome power. They run the 50 biggest industrial companies in the world. They produced sales in 1986 of $1.3 trillion, some 50% greater than the gross national product of West Germany, and the assets they control are three times that revenue total. They are bosses of 8.7 million people, an army 14 times the size of Napoleon's. When they move, things shake. And yet, after you get through the gleaming lobbies and outer offices, past the public relations retainers and the executive assistants, you find middle- aged men with all the frailties and emotions, the ups and downs, of the rest of us. Roger Smith, head of No. 1 General Motors, is pushing himself to the edge of exhaustion trying to halt GM's market share slide and satisfy his growing crowd of critics. Carl Hahn, the exuberant, motorcycle-riding chairman of Volkswagen, has been shaken by major setbacks in a career that never faced any before. Restructuring and layoffs have inflicted plenty of pain in the world, and CEOs feel it too. Says David Roderick of USX, the American steel producer: ''None of that is what you'd call pleasant.'' There are 21 Americans, 21 Europeans, six Japanese, and one each from South Korea, Brazil, and Kuwait. (That adds up to 51 because Unilever, the Dutch- British conglomerate, has two chiefs.) This disparate group has much in common. While the youngest is Ali Khalifa Al-Sabah, 41, of Kuwait Petroleum, and the oldest is Armand Hammer, 89, of Occidental Petroleum, the rest fall in a fairly narrow band between their late 50s and early 60s. The large majority are still married to their original brides, or they are widowers. Typically they have spent their entire careers with one company, working up step by step to the corner office. Most seem to be tough bosses. Exxon's Lawrence Rawl is an ex-Marine who takes no prisoners. Raymond Levy at Renault snaps off colleagues in midsentence if he thinks they are verbose. Cesare Romiti of Fiat is known as ''Il Duro,'' the hard one. There are a few nice guys who finished first. Everybody seems to love big, friendly Dick Heckert at Du Pont. Around Mobil, Allen Murray has been called ''Mr. Sunshine.'' As might be expected for leaders of industrial companies, a large number have undergraduate engineering degrees, and many have doctorates. (Surprise: There are only three MBAs.) The exceptions are notable. Denys Henderson, chairman of Britain's Imperial Chemical Industries, has a master's degree -- in English and French literature. Franco Reviglio is a professor of economics who leaped straight from his desk at the University of Turin into the chief executive's chair at ENI, Italy's state-owned oil company. Occidental Petroleum chief Armand Hammer, probably the odd man out of every generalization made about executives, is a medical doctor who never practiced. Hermann Strenger, head of the German chemical company Bayer, never went to a university. In a country where chief executives usually hold Ph.D.s in technical specialties, Strenger made it to the top as an irresistible salesman. Akio Tanii of Matsushita not only skipped college, but failed at almost everything he tried until he caught on at the Japanese consumer electronics company at 28. Golfing, tennis, hunting, and fishing are popular, but some chiefs have uncommon hobbies and diversions. George Keller of Chevron is a demon for dominoes; James Kinnear, who took Texaco into Chapter 11 bankruptcy to fight off Pennzoil, rises at six every morning to tend his orchids; Francois-Xavier Ortoli, who runs France's No. 2 oil company, writes poetry; Ford Chairman Donald Petersen collects rock and mineral specimens; and General Motors' Smith cherishes his collection of vintage convertibles -- made by GM, of course. Many served in World War II -- on all sides. The Japanese tend to remember the discipline they learned. Yotaro Iida, who runs Mitsubishi, recalls converting a battleship under construction into an aircraft carrier in just four months. ''If man has the will,'' he says, ''he can do anything.'' For German executives, most of whom were drafted very young toward the end of the war, the experience was a bitter one. The Korean war shattered Lee Byung Chull's Samsung food conglomerate. He lost everything but a brewery, whose profits he used to move into electronics, shipbuilding, and textiles. The CEOs share remarkably similar views on management. They agree that their most important jobs are delegating, communicating, planning, and, these days, restructuring. Exxon's Rawl delegates the minutiae of decisions to various committees, but never the responsibility. With knowledgeable people on his committees, Rawl says the right decision is obvious for him. Helmut Maucher, head of Nestle, shrinks from details. Instead of frequent, voluminous reports, he asks his managers to submit monthly summaries. Karlheinz Kaske of Siemens, the German electronics titan, contends, ''You win cooperation by explaining to talented people what you want, then giving them the authority and resources to accomplish it.'' Invariably the top bosses are persuasive communicators. Mobil's Murray relies on casual dinners to help establish informality and get straight talk from his junior executives. When Kaske of Siemens encounters disagreements among his barons, he brings them together for long, liquid dinners. Nestle's Maucher runs taste tests of the company's products during management meetings. Just try using business school jargon to describe your reaction to a Crunch bar. Lee Iacocca and Armand Hammer communicate on a grander scale: Their books, Iacocca and Hammer, have been best-sellers. Planning is not only long range, but global. Romano Prodi, chief executive of state-owned IRI, Italy's biggest industrial holding company, tells his managers that they must look far beyond Italy. Cor van der Klugt of Philips, the Dutch electronics firm, demonstrated his worldwide vision when he decided to share Philips' technology for compact disk players with archrival Sony of Japan. ''Sometimes you have to let the enemy inside,'' he says. The result was a single world standard for compact disk players and royalties for Philips. THINKING long term often means restructuring. By selling Alfa Romeo and unloading several minority stakes in other companies, Prodi of IRI raised $4 billion for his debt-ridden company. Wolfgang Hilger, chief executive of Hoechst, restructured by diversifying. Last year he acquired Celanese, No. 134 among the largest U.S. industrials. Restructuring could not shield the top 50 companies from the buffets of the world economy. Total sales and profits declined for the first time since 1982, largely because oil companies were hit with a deep slump in prices. As crude dropped from $28 a barrel in January 1986 to $14 in December, four petroleum companies dropped from the top 50. The biggest was Mexico's government-owned Pemex, the world's 22nd-largest industrial in 1985. Hurt also by the declining peso, Pemex's revenues plunged 45%. Sales of the 15 oil companies still on the list slid 23% in 1986, and profits dropped 19%. Atlantic Richfield went from No. 17 on last year's list to No. 45. Alone among the big oil companies, Kuwait Petroleum raised revenues, by 2%. But that was in dollars. In Kuwaiti dinars, sales were flat, and earnings fell 74%. Like a magic mirror, the continued weakness of the dollar made many foreign companies look better than they really were. Philips' revenues declined 8% in Dutch florins, but rose 24%, to $22.5 billion, when converted to dollars. Toshiba, a newcomer to the top 50 with revenues of $15 billion, saw its sales rise less than 1% in yen, but a healthy 11% in dollars. A 6% decline in revenues for Britain's Imperial Chemical Industries looked like a 7% increase when viewed from the U.S. French automakers Renault and Peugeot also got a lift from the dollar, but they increased unit sales as well. The two clambered over some fallen petroleum refiners to break into the top 50 for the first time. Daimler-Benz became Germany's largest industrial company after acquiring AEG, the electronics firm. Its sales rose 25% in deutsche marks, moving Daimler-Benz from No. 31 last year to No. 13 this year, the sharpest move up of any company that made the top 50 list in both years. Detroit accelerated briskly. Combined sales for U.S. automakers were up 10%. Ford's rose 19%. With the start-up costs for its new Taurus and Sable models behind it, Ford earned $3.3 billion, ahead of GM for the first time in half a century. GM's sales reached a record $102.8 billion, but the company lost share. Chrysler's revenues increased 6%, yet earnings dropped 14% because management spent heavily to retool. The world's largest consumer products companies had a sparkling year, with total sales up 27%. Mainly because of acquisitions, Procter & Gamble and RJR Nabisco, absent last year, returned to the list. Roughly one-third of RJR Nabisco's 1986 sales came from Nabisco Brands, which it bought for $4.9 billion. Rival Philip Morris picked up General Foods late in 1985 for $5.6 billion. The acquisition helped push up sales 70%, to $20.7 billion, and Philip Morris came onto the list for the first time, vaulting to No. 24.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: NO CREDIT CAPTION: THE WORLD'S 50 BIGGEST INDUSTRIAL CORPORATIONS DESCRIPTION: Primary business, sales, net income, rank and headquarters for each of 50 largest industrial corporations in the world.