高龄CEO盘点：95岁CEO掌舵公司60年
2011-07-27 17:30:14 来源: 福布斯中文网(上海) 有0人参与 手机看新闻很多公司都由高龄CEO来掌舵，其中有利有弊。在市值至少达到5亿美元的上市公司中，年 龄不低于75岁的CEO共有24人。其中有默多克、巴菲特等大家非常熟悉的人。而年届95岁的沃尔特・扎博尔是所有市值不低于5亿美元的上市公司中年纪最 大的CEO，他1951年就创办了自己的公司。
如果你关心新闻集团窃 听丑闻的进展，不可能不会想到年龄问题。上周在英国议会召开的听证会上，新闻集团80岁的董事会主席兼首席执行官（CEO）鲁珀特・默多克 （Rupert Murdoch）多次难以说出某个名字、叙述事件的经过，甚至不能听清被问到的问题。在某些时刻，他轻轻点着头，样子好像在打瞌睡。脱口 秀节目《每日秀》（The Daily Show）随后对此更是大做文章。形成鲜明对比的是坐在老默多克旁边38岁的詹姆斯・默多克，这位老默多克财产今 后的法定继承人对答如流，并且很容易就可以举出大量的数据。
对于CEO的职位来说，默多克的年龄不是非同一般的大。准确的说，根据《福布 斯》采集的数据，在市值至少达到5亿美元的上市公司中，他的年纪是所有CEO里第7大的。在年纪比默多克大的6名CEO（都是男性）中，他们管理公司的市 值均不超过110亿美元；新闻集团的市值现在大约为400亿美元。（请参见文末附表。）尽管一些媒体行业大亨的年纪大于默多克 传媒公司维亚康姆（Viacom）的萨姆纳 雷石东（Sumner Redstone）年届88岁、先进通信公司（Advance Communications）的纽豪斯（Si Newhouse）现年83岁，他们都满足于担任董事会主席，而将日常的管理工作交由其他人打理。
但 是如果你认为默多克年纪太大不适合担任CEO，那么请看一下在榜单上排在他之后的CEO：沃伦・巴菲特（Warren Buffett），他旗下的伯克希 尔・哈撒韦公司（Berkshire Hathaway）市值达到1,880亿美元，他依然敏锐的投资洞察力去年为其个人资产增加30亿美元。
年 龄增大以及伴随而来的认识能力下降是影响CEO表现的重要因素。但是两者之间的关系并非一贯如此。保罗・马修斯（Paul Mathews）是一名研究科 学家，也是纽约州大学药学院的精神病学助理教授。他指出：“在各种人群当中存在着丰富的多样性，有些人到60岁的时候老年化非常严重，但是有些人到了90 岁依然宝刀未老。”
此外，还有范围广泛的“心智功能”。“心智功能大大取决于从事的工作。”密歇根大学神经学教授罗杰・阿尔宾 （Roger Albin）说，他同时也是密西根大学安娜堡分校老年医学研究、教育和临床中心神经系统科学研究负责人。“那些每天除了去钓鱼之外就无所事 事的退休人员，显然与生活在紧张工作环境中的人面对非常不同的情况。”
即 使这些身居要职的老人家也受脑部老龄化的影响，并且令人惊奇的是，这些影响在生命早期就开始产生。对于一般人而言，从20岁开始，认识处理能力每年下降 0.5%至1%。到你达到标准的退休年龄时，“你的能力退化了20%至30%，” 加州大学戴维斯分校老年学研究所主任克莱伯・芬奇 （Caleb Finch）表示，“记忆和高速处理或多任务处理能力甚至大幅降低。处理多渠道信息而不犯错的能力大大减弱。”
CEO每天必须处理棘手的任务和来自多个渠道的数据。此外还必须具备将新创意与现有思想模式进行整合的能力，这在科技等快速变化的领域尤为重要。这种所谓的“流体智力”（fluid intelligence）能力也随着年龄增大而减弱。
“所有这些看起来有点矛盾，因为随着我们年纪增大，我们掌握更多管理能力，”芬奇表示。“但是，当然，我们也更多地了解到如何处理自己的错误。”
然而，不管你的反应速度多快，甚少公司愿意聘请25岁的年轻人担当要职（起码在硅谷之外是这样的），因为他们注重的是那些来之不易的经验阅历。“你必须在信息处理的速度与做决定时能够依赖的经验之间达到一定的平衡，”马修斯指出。
这 种经验是相当重要的。沃尔特・扎博尔（Walter J. Zable）自1951年创办圣地亚哥国防和技术公司Cubic 以来，一直担任公司的 CEO。年届95岁的扎博尔是所有市值不低于5亿美元的上市公司中年纪最大的CEO。科技实际上是他从事的第二种职业：在20世纪30年代末，他曾为职业 美式足球队里士满箭队和纽约巨人队效力。
现 年91岁的梅尔文・戈登（Melvin J. Gordon）是糖果公司Tootsie Roll Industries的CEO，他开始工作的时候也是 从事不同的行业。在1952年加盟现在这家公司之前，他曾经营袜类生产厂。戈登曾表示，在销售长袜时积累的零售知识对其以后在Tootsie Roll的 成功有较大裨益 这也证明了流体智力的作用。
另一方面，部分CEO终身从事同一个行业，并从中受益。零售公司好市多（Costco）CEO詹姆斯・西格尔(James Sinegal)自1954年开始进入零售行业，并在折扣店Price Club创始人索尔・普莱斯（Sol Price）手下学习贸易知识。经过普莱斯多年的教导，西格尔在1983年成立自己的第一家折扣连锁店。西格尔在对待客户和员工方面的理念是好市多成功的核心所在。
对 于鲁珀特・默多克在听证会上看似不堪重负的表现，研究脑部老化的专家却表示，不宜仅根据几次长时间的沉默和一些模棱两可的回答就对默多克的总体能力下任何 定论。“面对这样紧张的局面，对他总体的认知能力下任何定论都是非常不公平和不适当的。”马修斯说。其意思就是：如果把马克・扎克伯格 （Mark Zuckerberg）拉到国会前，他可能也变得沉默少语。
在市值至少达到5亿美元的上市公司中，年龄不低于75岁的CEO共有24人。
Media
Murdoch and Buffett Among the Oldest CEOs. Does It Matter?
It’s been impossible to watch the unfolding saga of News Corp.’s hacking scandal without thinking about age. Time and again during his three-hour appearance before a committee of Parliament last week, Rupert Murdoch, the media conglomerate’s 80-year-old chairman and CEO, appeared to struggle to recall a name, reconstruct a sequence of events, or even just hear the question he was being asked. At one point, his head jerked as though he had dozed off, a moment later highlighted on “The Daily Show.” Underscoring the impression was the contrasting presence at his side of his vigorous 38-year-old son and sometime heir apparent, James, who parried questions with alacrity and seemed to have reams of data at his easy recall.
If Murdoch came off as unusually elderly for a chief executive, that may be because, well, he is. To be precise, he’s the seventh-oldest CEO of a public company with a market capitalization of at least $500 million, according to data compiled by Forbes. Among the six men older than he in that position — and they are all men — none runs a firm with a cap above $11 billion; News Corp.’s is around $40 billion. (See the full list of public company CEOs age 75 and older at the bottom of this post.) And while some of Murdoch’s fellow media moguls are senior to him — Viacom‘s Sumner Redstone is 88, and Si Newhouse of Advance Communications is 83 — they are content to serve as chairmen, allowing others to handle day-to-day management.
But before you conclude that Murdoch is too old for his job, consider who’s just below him on the list of oldest CEOs: Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway is worth $188 billion, and whose undiminished investing acumen added $3 billion to his personal fortune last year.
Age, and the cognitive decline that goes along with it, is a very real factor in CEO performance. But the relationship between the two is far from consistent. “There’s enough variability across the population that there are individuals who are aging very significantly in their 60′s, and there are individuals who are really intact in their 90s,” says Paul Mathews, a research scientist and assistant professor of psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine.
There’s also a wide range of what might be considered acceptable mental function. “It varies tremendously depending on the job,” says Roger Albin, professor of neurology at the University of Michigan and chief of neuroscience research at Ann Arbor VA’s Geriatrics Research, Education and Clinical Center. “Somebody who’s retired and does nothing but go out fishing every day is clearly in a very different situation from somebody in a demanding professional environment.”
Even those oldsters who function at a high level are subject to the effects of age on the brain — and they start surprisingly early in life. For the average person, beginning in your twenties, there’s a decline in cognitive processing of 0.5 percent to 1 percent per year. By the time you reach standard retirement age, “you’re down 20 to 30 percent in your capacity,” says Caleb Finch, director of the Gerontology Research Institute at USC Davis. “Memory and high-speed processing or multi-tasking declines even more abruptly. Being able to handle multiple streams of information without errors declines sharply.”
The ability to juggle competing tasks and streams of data is exactly what a CEO’s job demands every hour of every day. So is the ability to integrate new ideas into existing mental models, particularly in fast-changing fields like technology. That ability, known as fluid intelligence, also declines with age.
“All this seems contradictory because as we get more senior, we get more administrative capacities,” says Finch. “But, of course, we’ve learned more about how to cope with our mistakes.”
That hard-won knowledge is the reason few companies — at least outside Silicon Valley — would want a 25-year-old in the corner office, no matter how lightning-fast his synapses fire. “You have to balance the speed at which you can process information into working memory against the total sum of your experiences you can bring to bear on that decision,” says Mathews.
Those experiences can be considerable. Walter J. Zable has been the CEO of Cubic, a San Diego-based defense and technology company, since he founded it in 1951. At 95, Zable is the oldest CEO of a public company valued at at least $500 million. Technology is actually his second career: In the late 1930s, he played professional football for the Richmond Arrows and the New York Giants.
Melvin J. Gordon, the 91-year-old CEO of Tootsie Roll Industries, also got his start in a different field. Before joining the candy manufacturer way back in 1952, he ran a hosiery maker. Gordon has said the retail savvy he acquired selling stockings was instrumental in his later success at Tootsie Roll — a demonstration of fluid intelligence at work.
Some CEOs, on the other hand, benefit from spending their entire professional lives mastering one field. Costco CEO James Sinegal got his start in the retail business in 1954, and learned his trade at the feet of legendary Price Club founder Sol Price. Years of price’s tutelage prepared him for the launch of his own discount chain in 1983. Sinegal’s philosophies about the proper way to treat customers and employees are at the core of Costco’s success.
As for Rupert Murdoch’s creaky-seeming performance at the hearing, experts in brain aging caution against jumping to any conclusions about Murdoch’s overall functioning based on a few long pauses and vague answers. “To sit in that kind of stress situation and draw any inferences as to somebody’s general cognitive status is very unfair and inappropriate,” says Mathews. Translation: If someone dragged Mark Zuckerberg in front of Parliament, he might be at a loss for words, too.
These are the 24 men age 75 and older who are CEOs of public companies with market capitalizations of at least $500 million.
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