The age of the American CEO did not begin until the end of the 19th century. Prior to that time, all the largest businesses in America were run by owners and families acting as proprietors. The best examples of these were in four industries: steel, finance, oil, and railroads.



Although the firms often had general managers, most historians believe that the period in which the CEO dominated large corporations did not begin until Alfred Sloan took the helm of GM in the mid-1930s.



The 24/7 list is based on a review of the Fortune 500 companies back to 1955. In order to perform further analysis, we also consulted the histories of US corporations dating back to the 1880s.



Those selected for the list fall into one of two simple categories – those who ruined the companies completely while they served as sitting CEOs and those who did severe damage from which their firms could never possibly recover. Some will make the argument that many of these CEOs should be excluded because their companies failed as a result of fraud committed by the CEOs. In each of these cases, however, the chief executives ruined the company. It does not change this fact if this occurred because of avarice or mismanagement.



Readers may argue that there are other CEOs who should have been on this list. However, each of the CEOs on this list ran their companies when they were at or near their peak performance. Many companies on this list like Pan Am and Eastman Kodak, dominated their industries. That makes these failures all the more colossal and, almost certainly, avoidable.

(This feature originally appeared at 24/7 Wall St)