Indian-American Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Adobe, has been named by Fortune in its 2018 Business Person of the Year list, which ranks 20 business executives “delivering on the bottom line and beyond”.
Narayen, 56, ranks 12th on the list, which has been topped by the CEO of insurance company Progressive Tricia Griffith and includes CEO of graphics chipmaker Nvidia, Jensen Huang, French conglomerate Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and PayPal CEO Dan Schulman.
On Narayen, Fortune said “the maker of creativity tools like Photoshop doesn’t quite grab headlines like some of its Silicon Valley neighbours. But Adobe is playing the long game—and so is Shantanu Narayen”.
In November, Narayen celebrated his 11th anniversary at the helm, a tenure that is increasing rare in corporate America, Fortune said.
“Narayen’s move to turn boxed software into cloud services gave the San Jose company a subscription business that keeps on giving. And his recent rash of marketing-tech acquisitions…signals he is not afraid to compete with Salesforce and Oracle. A quiet giant? Not anymore.”
In choosing Fortune’s Business person of the Year, the publication weighs 10 financial metrics, including 12-month and 36-month increases in profits and revenue, stock performance and total shareholder returns.
