If youth is, indeed, wasted on the young, the names on this list didn’t get the memo. Some built industry-leading companies around their own inventions, others climbed the rungs of corporate giants at a blistering pace, but whatever the route, everyone on this list made it to the top of their field before their 41st--or in some cases, 30th--birthday.
The 20 CEOs listed here hail from the publicly-traded companies that have CEOs age 40 and under with the highest market caps as of March 24, 2015.
This year’s list skews slightly older than previous years’. Mark Zuckerberg, long the boy wonder of this group, entered his fourth decade last May. While at 30 he remains five years younger than the list’s next most junior member, Rice Energy’s Daniel J. Rice, and nabs the top spot with Facebook’s $238.8 billion market cap, he’s no longer the group’s youngest.
File sharing service
This year’s list is also more financially robust, if not by much. In 2013, Altisource Asset Management claimed the lowest market cap of this group, with $1.8 billion. This year Box not only claims the youngest CEO but also the lowest market cap, with $2 billion.
Google’s Larry Page, long the king of the 40-and-under CEO hill, aged out of this roundup in the past year, but the top of the list is still dominated by youthful titans of tech. Runner up to Zuckerberg, 39-year old Marissa Mayer is the only woman to grace these ranks for the third year running.
Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson, 40, takes third place, up from sixth last year. The company develops mega-hit video games like Madden NFL, FIFA World Cup, and the Sims. The Australian-born Wilson is a known enthusiast of triathlons and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Yelp’s Jeremy Stoppelman remains on the list, though he falls from seventh place to tenth.
Seven newcomers join the list, including Box’s Levie. David John Oakes of real estate investment firm DDR Corp. takes spot number five. GoPro founder Nicholas Woodman, 39, also joins the list. The company’s 2014 IPO made Woodman a billionaire. Though stock prices have subsequently faltered, currently, Forbes pegs his fortune at $2.3 billion.
Restaurant delivery service GrubHub’s CEO Matthew M. Maloney, 39, takes ninth place. David A. Jackson of Knight Transportation, Michael L. Babich of Insys Therapeutics, and Parsley Energy’s Bryan Sheffield round out the remaining seven.
And while they might be able to drive up stock prices, even top CEOs can’t halt the march of time. Like Larry Page, Guidewire Software CEO Marcus Ryu celebrates a birthday--and exits the list.
The individuals who meet the criteria for this list are from the 20 publicly-traded companies with the highest market caps (as of market close March 24, 2015) who have CEOs ages 40 and younger. All data is taken from S&P Capital IQ.
