The 19 Biggest Loose Cannon CEOs

The News Corporation founder and CEO frequently sounds off on his conservative political views through his twitter account.  

On Google: "Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying."

On President Obama: "Yesterday Obama went off script, showed real self ie government omnipotent, individuals secondary. Must be big damage."

Taylor recently got into a public spat with the French government after failing to come to an agreement to save a factory. He sent a letter to the country's Minister of Transforming Productivity, heavily criticizing the French work ethic and unions.

From the letter: "I have visited the factory a couple of times. The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three, and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that’s the French way!"

O'Leary runs a popular Irish budget airline. He's prone to making bombastic, sometimes expletive-laden statements and the occasional personal attack, which have landed him in legal trouble more than once. 

The Telegraph collected a few of his best quotes:

"Anyone who thinks Ryanair flights are some sort of bastion of sanctity where you can contemplate your navel is wrong. We already bombard you with as many in-flight announcements and trolleys as we can. Anyone who looks like [they're] sleeping, we wake them up to sell them things."

"I think the most influential person in Europe in the last 20 to 30 years has been Margaret Thatcher, who has left a lasting legacy that has driven us towards lower taxes and greater efficiency. Without her we'd all be living in some French bloody unemployed republic."

David A. Siegel, founder and CEO of Westgate Resorts and one of the richest men in America told his employees that if President Obama were to win the election, that he would have "no choice" but to reduce the size of the company.

Siegel's letter to employees, from the HuffingtonPost:

"The economy doesn't currently pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is another 4 years of the same Presidential administration. Of course, as your employer, I can't tell you whom to vote for, and I certainly wouldn't interfere with your right to vote for whomever you choose...If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company."

(Not only didn't he fire anyone, he gave all of his employees raises.)

Founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management recently, Ackman participated in a live brawl on CNBC with billionaire investor Carl Icahn. The topic of conversation that fueled the fight was Herbalife, a multi-level marketing firm that sells nutrition products, which Ackman had called a pyramid scheme at a recent conference. Ackman basically called his rival a hypocrite on live television in an attempt to tarnish his image.

On Herbalife: 

"If the FTC misses Herbalife, it's the equivalent of the SEC missing Madoff."

"After 18 months of work and assistance of some of the top law firms in the country we've concluded that it's a pyramid scheme."

On Carl Icahn:

"The big issue about Carl Icahn, is he's not used to someone stepping up to him." 

"What I thank Carl for is he helped highlight issues with Herbalife." 

Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey is a professed libertarian and isn't shy about taking public stances on issues he cares about. During an NPR interview he claimed that Obamacare, which he had previously criticized as a form of socialism, was "more like fascism." 

Here's the quote: "Technically speaking, it's more like fascism. Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn't own the means of production, but they do control it — and that's what's happening with our health care programs and these reforms."

Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk, is known for publicly bashing The New York Times when he called their review of the company's Model S Sedan "fake." The review criticized the car's battery life because it did not last the length of a test drive. 

From a 2013 interview with CNBC: "I mean, there are times when 'The New York Times' has, well, published articles that are less than accurate. And it's well-known [for] situations like that. And I think unfortunately this is one of those cases.

"We explicitly said that to do this trip he needs to make sure he's fully charged when he starts up, that he doesn't take detours, and that he drives at a reasonable speed. I'm not talking about some ridiculously low speed. I'm talking about, you know, at least — not too far above the speed limit. And none of those three things were done. So if somebody's explicitly asked to take reasonable actions in a test drive and then blatantly doesn't, what conclusion is one supposed to reach?"

Abercrombie & Fitch CEO, Michael Jeffries, micromanages his company to an absurd degree by choosing every detail from the songs he plays in his stores to the underwear his employees use. Jefferies also admits that his brand is exclusive and he wants to keep it that way. 

From a 2006 piece at Salon:  "In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids," he says. "Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don't belong [in our clothes], and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don't alienate anybody, but you don't excite anybody, either." 

Ellison's Twitter account, from which he has only posted one tweet, already has 35,000 followers who hope to hear from the notoriously outspoken enterprise software chief.

When Hewlett Packard fired then-CEO Mark Hurd, Ellison was not pleased. "You are going to fire Mark Hurd and hire Leo? What I said at the time was that this was the best idea since the Apple board fired Steve Jobs. Really brilliant."

Ellison went on to hire Hurd himself. He's also accused SalesForce CEO Marc Benioff of stealing the idea for NetSuite from him. 

Softbank's CEO, Masayoshi Son, is known for aggressive business moves, like his $20 billion-dollar acquisition of Sprint. 

During that deal, he issued a warning to the other wireless carriers in the United States, saying "I am a man, and every man wants to be number one, not number two or number three."

The Fiat and Chrysler CEO is something of a quote-machine, frequently making somewhat impolitic and controversial statements. Reuters reported on one such incident at the Detroit auto show when Marchionne was discussing Alfa Romeo luxury sedans.

"I cannot come up with a schlock product, I just won't," Marchionne told a room of journalists at the car show. "I won't put an American engine into that car. With all due respect to my American friends, it needs to be a wop engine."

"There are some things that are well-done in Italy."

After reporters registered evident surprise at his use of an ethnic slur, Marchionne turned to one of them and asked, "Why are you surprised?"

The investor, technology executive, and sports mogul is unafraid to weigh in on everything from presidential politics to Wall Street. He's been fined more than a million dollars by the NBA for statements about the league and officiating.

From a 2012 interview: "Wall Street used to be a place where you can raise capital to grow businesses. That's not the case anymore. Wall Street has become a platform for hackers."

Dimon is a full-throated defender of the banking industry, which has come under withering criticism in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. From an interview with New York Magazine: 

“Everyone is talking about the culture, the culture, and all that, and it’s just not true,” Dimon says. “Most bankers are decent, honorable people. We’re wrapped up in all this crap right now. We made a mistake. We’re sorry. It doesn’t detract from all the good things we’ve done. I am not responsible for the financial crisis,” he adds. “I hate to tell you. We were a port of safety in the storm. I find it unbelievable that that is the general theme — that you have to walk in a room and act like you are responsible for things you are not responsible for.”

The real estate mogul is more than willing to weigh in on politics and the issues of the day, even considering a presidential run at one point. He was criticized for his support of the "birther" movement, which questioned the validity President Barack Obama's birth certificate. 

In an August 2012 Twitter post: "What's more dangerous for the country -- the Iranian nuclear threat or Barack Obama as President?"

AIG was one of the biggest disasters of the financial crisis and received a massive taxpayer bailout, so Benmosche received a great deal of criticism for this comment made to New York Magazine:

“But it (the AIG bailout) wasn’t a free lunch,” Benmosche insists. It’s a point of view that I am apparently not the first to fail to appreciate. “Everybody said it’s just not going to happen, they’ll never pay it off,” he goes on. “SIGTARP, Elizabeth Warren, Gretchen Whatshername in the New York Times. The fact is we now have succeeded in getting the Fed back all of their money, and we’re just close to getting the Treasury paid back. And do you know,” he adds, an indignant note creeping into his voice, “neither of them have ever said ‘Thank you’? We have done all the right things. Somebody should say, ‘By golly, those AIG people made a promise and they are living up to a promise!’"

The enterprise software chief is known for elaborate and controversial guerrilla marketing stunts, often aimed at chief rival Oracle. He's not above the occasional grandiose statement, once comparing old software to Arab dictators.  

[In the Arab revolution] you didn't see signs saying 'Thank you Microsoft.' You didn't see signs saying 'thank you IBM.' ... We've seen Mubarak fall, Qaddafi fall. Not so long from now we'll hear about a corporate spring, an enterprise spring. When will the first corporate CEO fall for the same reason — because customers are rising up, they're not listening to their employees, they're not paying attention.

And he's always willing to take a crack at his rivals. From the same conference, on Oracle:

We need to beware of the false cloud. Because the false cloud, ladies and gentlemen, is not efficient! It is not democratic! It is not economical! It is not environmental! It is not the future.

Wynn is so legendarily outspoken that his quarterly conference calls with analysts are one of the highlights of earnings season. He's been particularly critical of the Obama administration.

From a 2011 earnings call: "I'm saying it bluntly, that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I can prove it and I could spend the next 3 hours giving you examples of all of us in this market place that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our health care costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right."

The head of the chip-maker has had a long-standing feud with rival Intel, once telling analysts that "we're going to open a can of whoop ass" on the company. In the same call, he referred to Intel's graphics implementation as "a joke." 

And he has some words of warning for any who would think about going toe to toe with him, telling the BBC, "Maybe this is a bit of my early schooling — I will never start a fight, but I will never walk away from one. So if someone is going to pick on me, they'd better think twice."

Upon learning that executive Mark Lucovsky was defecting to Google, Ballmer allegedly hurled a chair across the room and unleashed a profanity-laced tirade on the company, with promises of revenge, saying that "Google's not a real company. It’s a house of cards."

Ballmer will take the occasional public crack at Google too, telling the Seattle Times "I think Google is just another big company at this stage. It's not like they have the charm of smallness or pre-IPO-ness with them."

Bartz's time as CEO of Yahoo! was relatively brief, clocking in at only two-and-a-half years, it was very intense and occasionally profane. She was never the type to mince words with competitors, journalists, or even her own team.

From when she was first trying to turn the company around:

"So when I say product people we sort of had a one product management person for every three engineers. So we had a lot of people running around telling engineers what to do but nobody is f-ing doing anything. So, excuse me. I knew that would slip out one of these times."

She's not any less outspoken now, saying about the board that fired her: 

"The board was so spooked by being cast as the worst board in the country. Now they're trying to show that they're not the doofuses that they are."

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