TOP 100 | LEADERS

Title: Chief Executive Officer Company: ExxonMobil Industry: Oil & Gas

Vindication rarely arrives this measurable. Darren Woods spent years as climate campaigners’ favourite villain, then delivered what he had promised, discipline over drama. His US $ 60bn Pioneer acquisition made ExxonMobil the emperor of the Permian, Guyana became the industry’ s most profitable province and the company he refused to reinvent now bankrolls lithium, hydrogen and carbon capture from strength. An electrical engineer who rose through refineries, he runs the supermajor with a plant manager’ s intolerance for waste. The transition, on his telling, will be engineered by people who understand molecules.

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