Financial Times Person of the Year

The Financial Times, a British business newspaper, annually nominates a Person of the Year to the person the newspaper has considered has demonstrated considerable influence in a given year. There appear to have been a number of instances (1971, 1979, 1995) when no person was nominated.^[1]

List

In 1999, John von Neumann was chosen as the FT Person of the Century.^[2]

Past recipients:

Year	Choice	Notes	Ref.
1970	Jean Rey	President of the European Commission	[3]
1972	Henry Kissinger	United States Secretary of State	[3]
1973	Faisal	King of Saudi Arabia	[3]
1974	Harold Wilson	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom	[3]
1975	Helmut Schmidt	Chancellor of Germany	[3]
1976	Jimmy Carter	President of the United States	[3]
1977	Anwar Sadat	President of Egypt	[3]
1978	Deng Xiaoping	Senior Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China	[3]
1980	Lech Wałęsa	Leader of the Solidarnosc movement	[3]
1981	François Mitterrand	President of France	[3]
1982	George Shultz	United States Secretary of State	[3]
1983	John R. Opel	CEO of IBM	[3]
1984	Albert Hall	(Representative of) the Army of Unemployed	[3]
1985	Mikhail Gorbachev	Leader of the Soviet Union	[3]
1986	Yasuhiro Nakasone	Prime Minister of Japan	[3]
1987	Margaret Thatcher	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom	[3]
1988	Henry Kravis and George R. Roberts	Founders of KKR & Co. Inc.	[3]
1989	Mikhail Gorbachev	Leader of the Soviet Union	[3]
1990	Helmut Kohl	Chancellor of Germany	[3]
1991	James Baker	United States Secretary of State	[3]
1992	Deng Xiaoping	Paramount leader of the People's Republic of China	[3]
1993	Edouard Balladur	Prime Minister of France	[3]
1994	Bill Gates	Co-founder and CEO of Microsoft	[3]
1996	Rupert Murdoch	Founder and CEO of News Corporation	[3]
1997	Tony Blair	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom	[3]
1998	Alan Greenspan	Chairman of the Federal Reserve	[3]
1999	John von Neumann	Polymath and inventor	[3]
2000	Craig Venter	Biochemist and entrepreneur	[3]
2001	Howard Lutnick	CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Partners	[3]
2002	George W. Bush	President of the United States	[3]
2003	Jeffrey Immelt	CEO of General Electric	[3]
2004	Eliot Spitzer	Attorney General of New York	[3]
2005	Sergey Brin and Larry Page	Founders of Google	[4]
2006	Lakshmi Mittal	CEO of ArcelorMittal	[3]
2007	Jean-Claude Trichet	President of the European Central Bank	[5]
2008	Barack Obama	President-elect of the United States	[6]
2009	Lloyd Blankfein	CEO of Goldman Sachs	[3]
2010	Steve Jobs	Co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc	[7]
2011	Mohamed Bouazizi	Representative of the Arab youth in Arab Spring	[8]
2012	Mario Draghi	President of the European Central Bank	[9]
2013	Jack Ma	Founder of Alibaba Group	[10]
2014	Tim Cook	CEO of Apple Inc	[11]
2015	Angela Merkel	Chancellor of Germany	[12]
2016	Donald Trump	President-elect of the United States	[13]
2017	Susan Fowler	Software engineer, formerly at Uber	[14]
2018	George Soros	Philanthropist	[15]
2019	Satya Nadella	CEO of Microsoft	[16]
2020	Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci	Founders of BioNTech and co-developers of the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine	[17]
2021	Elon Musk	CEO of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX	[18]
2022	Volodymyr Zelenskyy	President of Ukraine	[19]
2023	Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen	CEO of Novo Nordisk	[20]

References

1. "FT Person of the Year". ig.ft.com.
2. Jaeger, Lars (2022). The stumbling progress of 20th century science: how crises and great minds have shaped our modern world. Springer Nature. p. 160. ISBN 978-3-031-09618-1. OCLC 1346143050.
3. "FT Person of the Year". Financial Times. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
4. "The single-minded technologists". 12 December 2005.
5. "Trichet navigates choppy waters". 23 December 2007.
6. "Person of the Year: Barack Obama". 23 December 2008.
7. "Silicon Valley visionary who put Apple on top". 23 December 2010.
8. "A generation at last in ferment". 12 December 2011.
9. "FT Person of the Year: Mario Draghi". 13 December 2012.
10. "Person of the year: Jack Ma". 12 December 2013.
11. "Person of the Year: Tim Cook of Apple". 11 December 2014.
12. "Person of the Year: Angela Merkel – The transformation of a cautious chancellor". 13 December 2015.
13. "FT Person of the Year: Donald Trump". 12 December 2016.
14. Hook, Leslie (12 December 2017). "FT Person of the Year: Susan Fowler". Financial Times. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
15. Hook, Leslie (19 December 2018). "FT Person of the Year: George Soros". Financial Times. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
16. Waters, Richard (19 December 2019). "FT Person of the Year: Satya Nadella". Financial Times.
17. Miller, Joe; Cookson, Clive (16 December 2020). "FT People of the Year: BioNTech's Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci". Financial Times. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
18. Waters, Richard (15 December 2021). "Elon Musk: Interview with FT's Person of the year". Financial Times. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
19. "FT Person of the Year: Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 'I am more responsible than brave'". Financial Times. 5 December 2022.
20. Hannah Kuchler, "FT Person of the Year: Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen of Novo Nordisk", Financial Times, 19 December 2023, accessed 6 January 2024