Guess Which of the Philippines' Largest Firms Are Run by Graduates of World's Best MBA Programs

Each year, The Economist publishes a list of the world’s best 100 master’s in business administration (MBA) programs based on a survey of current students as well as alumni.

This year’s list is dominated by US business schools led by the University of Chicago (Booth), Northwestern University (Kellogg), Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), and Stanford University. 

In a sign of the high quality of CEOs of the Philippines’ largest listed companies, many of them, not only have MBAs and other graduate business degrees, but also received them from the universities that dominated the top ranks of The Economist’s annual listings of the top 100 business schools titled "Which MBA?"

Out of the 100 biggest listed firms by market capitalization in the Philippines, 45 companies have CEOs with a master’s degree, according to their respective annual reports. Eighty-five percent, or 38 of them, either have an MBA or completed courses in graduate business schools.

Of the 38, 19 CEOs received their MBAs from top four business schools that made it to The Economist’s latest list: the University of Chicago – Booth School of Business, Northwestern University – Kellogg School of Management, Harvard Business School, and University of Pennsylvania – Wharton School. (See infographic)

Apart from ranking the MBA programs, The Economist also compiles the average salary of the business schools’ alumni, both before taking the MBA and afterward, and calculates the typical pay increase they enjoy as a result of completing their MBA.

Using data from the listed companies’ latest (2017) annual reports, we also compiled the average salary of each of the firms’ top five executives, including the CEO, and averaged this by the school where the CEOs took their MBAs. 

It thus becomes possible to compare the average salary of CEOs across the different schools.

As expected, the salaries of the CEOs are several times higher compared to the average pay of fresh MBA graduates. The multiple can be compared across business schools by looking at the bar graphs of the average CEO salaries and the average pay of the school’s new MBA graduates. The bigger the gap, the higher the multiple. (See infographic)

This story originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com.ph. Minor edits have been made by the Esquiremag.ph editors.