Apple's Steve Jobs named world's best-performing CEO

The rankings, revealed in the January-February 2010 edition of Harvard Business Review, place Jobs comfortably in front, well ahead of second-place finisher Yun Jong-Yong of Samsung Electronics.

"The #1 CEO on the list, Steve Jobs, delivered a whopping 3,188% industry-adjusted return (34% compounded annually) after he rejoined Apple as CEO in 1997, when the company was in dire shape," the report said. "From that time until the end of September 2009, Apple’s market value increased by $150 billion."

The global ranking compared 1,999 CEOs that assumed their job no earlier than January 1995 and no later than December 2007. The executives had to be the head of a publicly traded company that was present on the Standard & Poor's Global 1200 or its BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) 40 list at some point since 1997.

The criteria did exclude high-profile CEOs like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who took the helm of his company well before 1995.