Many CEOs carefully cultivate a quiet and considered public image, limiting contact to quarterly earnings calls or the occasional carefully-considered interview.
Then there are the others. The ones who make headlines with outbursts on politics, about their competitors, or even against an entire country's work ethic.
At best, these incidents are distracting. At worst, they hurt a companies reputation and lose them customers. We identified the biggest loose cannons at major companies who can't seem to stay out of the news.
News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch
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."
Titan International CEO Maurice Taylor
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!"
Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary
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."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider