Three Indian chief executive officers -- Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries, Nandan Mohan Nilekani of Infosys Technologies and Ratan Tata of the Tata group -- have figured in this year's list of World's 50 most respected business leaders.
Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, is ranked joint 33rd with Gianni Agnelli of Fiat. He is followed by Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation at 35th place.
Nandan Nilekani is jointly ranked 45th with Jorge Geradu Johannpeter of Geradu.
Ratan Tata is ranked 50th in the list headed by Bill Gates as number one and Jack Welch, at number two.
Two Indian companies figure among World's 90 most respected companies -- Infosys at 85th and Reliance at 87th place.
The list was published by Financial Times on Tuesday based on a global survey and research by Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
This is the fifth year of global survey of CEOs and this year's list is based on opinions and interviews of more than 1,000 respondents across more than 20 countries.
The core of the survey remains consistent over time, identifying those companies and business leaders globally that are most respected by their peers and the reasons for those choices.
The most respected 12 Indian companies are Reliance Industries, Infosys Technologies, Hindustan Lever, Tata Engineering and Locomotive, Dr Reddy's Labs, Wipro, Larsen and Toubro, Ranbaxy Laboratories, ITC, Tata Iron and Steel, Gujarat Ambuja Cements and TVs Suzuki.
Globally, General Electric of US tops the list for the fifth consecutive year followed by Microsoft. Another US company, IBM occupies the third place for the second year in succession.
Reliance Industries also figures among the top ten most respected companies in the energy and chemical sector. Du Pont tops this list followed by BP, while Reliance is at 10th place. Incidentally, Reliance is the only company from the Asia-Pacific region to make it to this list.
Other companies in the list include energy/chemical giants such as Royal Dutch/Shell, Exxon Mobil, BASF, ICI, Dow Chemicals and Bayer.
Reliance and Infosys are also the only two Indian companies that feature in the list of global companies that create the most value for their shareholders.
Reliance is ranked at 36th position with Vokswagen of Germany.
Infosys is jointly ranked 43rd with Samsung of Korea. Microsoft leads this list and General Electric occupies the second place in the category.
According to the survey, Reliance is the only Indian company that will make the most impact on economic/social issues in the emerging markets over the next five to ten years. Among the 60 such companies, Reliance is ranked 53rd. Once again Microsoft and McDonald take the top two positions.
Reliance also features in the maximum number of lists in this year's survey.
It found place in five lists -- World's most respected companies, India's most respected company, most respected companies in energy and chemical sector, companies that create most value for shareholders and companies that will make the most impact on economic/social issues in emerging markets over the next five to ten years.
Infosys Technologies figures in three lists whereas Larsen and Toubro features in two.