No. 2 Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple

Last year's position: 2

Apple's head man Steve Jobs - always the bridesmaid, never the bride. As in 2004, Jobs hovers dangerously near the top of the table without landing the number one spot.

According to this year's Agenda Setters panellists, Jobs is deserving of a top 10 placing for a lot more than being the man who does a natty line in white MP3 players - he's both a tech and corporate leader.

As one panellist says: "Apple last year had the greatest growth of all the Nasdaq 100 companies based on market capitalisation. And that comes from the top."

Apple and Jobs have continued to impress with the turnaround of the business. While it's no secret the iPod continues to run rings around the competition in terms of market share, Jobs and his evidently canny team of marketers - remember the G5 'From the makers of the iPod' ad campaign? - have even managed to boost sales in the arguably more important Mac unit.

The last 12 months even saw Jobs and co turning their attention to the significant 'switchers' market with the Mac mini. While initial verdicts were mixed, the hardware remains an important riposte to criticism Apple is only for high-end users.

And it was the Mac, rather than the iPod, that drew praise from our Agenda Setters panel.

"Apple absolutely makes innovative products which then last in the market. It's not just innovation, it's really long-lasting innovation. Something like the Mac, which could easily have disappeared long ago, has stayed there for years simply because of the quality of the product," says one panellist.

Steve Jobs is certainly a worthy Agenda Setter - a man with his finger on the tech pulse, a friend of his investors and a gutsy leader. Any CEO happy to kill off one of his company's best-selling products - bye, iPod mini! - has got to be worth keeping an eye on.