Jack Welch, the man behind American conglomerate General Electric, has been named as the most admired businessman of all time in a Guardian poll of Britain's leading bosses.
Mr Welch, who took over as chairman of GE in 1981, was picked by nearly half of the FTSE 100 chief executives as the man whose achievements they regarded most highly.
But Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft, was nominated as the most influential business person of the century by one in two executives. Both men were selected from a list of contenders which stretched back to the last century and included giants of the business world whose achievements have transformed modern life such as Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller.
Only a handful of the bosses of Britain's largest companies selected any British executives, either as their most admired or most influential executive. Those who did secure some support included Arthur Guinness, Sir John Brown of BP Amoco and Tim Berners-Lee who founded the world wide web in 1990 while working at the European particle physics laboratory in Geneva.
He is now a director of W3C, part of the consortium developing the next generation of the web and remains a research scientist.
Nobody selected Richard Branson, possibly the most high profile British businessman, and one most often named by members of the public as their favourite entrepreneur. A tenth of respondents to the poll conducted earlier this month selected Beats by dre Cheap discount retail pioneer, Sam Walton - the man behind the Wal-Mart empire - as the most admired businessman. A similar proportion backed Henry Ford, the man who brought the motor car to the masses.
Among leading business people who received no votes were August Thyssen, John Paul Getty, GEC's Lord Weinstock, Lee Iacocca, Walter Hass - who popularised Levi jeans - Ray Kroc - who made sure no country was safe from the McDonald's beefburgers - Robert Woodruff of Coca-Cola, the Heinz chief Tony O'Reilly or publisher William Randolph Hearst.
In 18 years as the head of GE Mr Welch has increased the value of the group from $14bn (￡8.7bn) to more than $400bn. As its eighth chairman in the company's 117 years, he has overseen the recent arrival of $100bn worth of annual sales while net profits are heading for the $10bn mark. Under his tenure, the share price has risen thirtyfold.
In his time at the top he has transformed the company from a collection of electrical businesses, ranging from turbines and aero-engines to white goods, and turned it into a vast enterprise, encompassing the NBC television network and a huge lease-finance business, GE Capital, which is now Beats By Dre In-Ear the world's biggest and most successful non-bank financial operation with credit cards and insurance.
The corporation also includes plastics, appliances, industrial systems and diagnostic equipment.
Mr Welch has sold about $10bn of businesses but has bought companies worth $19bn and has never sacrificed GE's diversity.
He is one of the few chief executives whose shareholders would not argue about his $57m a year pay packet. However, even that pales into insignificance compared to the $100bn fortune amassed by William H Gates, who set up Microsoft 25 years ago.
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