Fabrizio Freda, president and chief executive officer, The Estée Lauder Companies, has been named to the highly prestigious Barron’s list of the World’s Best CEOs in 2018.

Thirty top CEOs were announced to Barron’s World’s Best CEOs 2018 list. Fabrizio and The Estée Lauder Companies join other top performing organizations and executives, including Larry Fink (BlackRock), Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Jamie Dimon (JP Morgan Chase), Robert Iger (Disney), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), and Larry Page (Alphabet).

The formula for making Barron’s World’s Best CEOs list consists of several key ingredients, among them revenue, earnings growth and share-price performance over the past five years. Other important factors include innovation, transformation, growth, stamina, staying power, vision and leadership. 

In Barron’s words, “Exceptional chief executives are preparing for tomorrow’s challenges by putting today’s cash windfall to good use. It’s no coincidence, then, that two themes stood out as Barron’s compiled its 14th annual list of the World’s Best CEOs: cloud savvy and smart acquisitions.”

Specifically aboout Freda, Barron’s wrote, “Fabrizio Freda at Estée Lauder (EL) has pushed a rising portion of his beauty products through high-margin channels, like airport stores and e-commerce sites, growing earnings quickly and attracting a rising price/earnings ratio for the shares.” Elaborating further in the Growth Leaders feature story, Barron’s said, “He invigorated the company with new brands, new markets, and a fresh focus on millennials… Freda, a consumer products marketing whiz... also has acquired small, upstart brands that are disrupting the industry.”

The business growth achieved under Fabrizio’s leadership as CEO has gained worldwide attention from investors, analysts, industry peers, top-tier business press and many others. It is an honor to add Barron’s World’s Best CEOs list to the much-deserved recognition of Fabrizio and The Estée Lauder Companies.

The Barron’s World’s Best CEOs list appeared on the cover of the May 26, 2018 issue.