Washington: Reliance Industries chairman, Mr Mukesh Ambani, has been ranked the fifth best performing CEO in the world by the prestigious Harvard Business Review (HBR) with Apple's Mr Steve Jobs at the top.

Ahead of Ambani, the only Indian to feature among top 50 CEOs, are Mr Jobs, Mr Yun Jong-Yong of Samsung Electronics, Russian energy firm Gazprom's Mr Alexey Miller and Mr John Chambers of Cisco Systems.

The likes of Mr Jack Welch, Mr Warren Buffett, Mr Larry Ellison and Mr Bill Gates do not find mention in the list as HBR considered only CEOs who assumed the job between January 1995 and December 2007.

Mr Ambani is also ranked number two among the top 10 emerging market CEOs with Miller at the top. Mr K.V. Kamath of the ICICI Bank, ranked number 9, is the other Indian in the list.

The HBR said it ranked CEOs of large publicly traded companies in a study conducted over 2,000 CEOs worldwide. The entire group represented 48 nationalities and companies based in 33 countries.

"On an average, the top 50 CEOs increased the wealth of their shareholders by $48.2 billion," it said.

"They delivered a total shareholder return of 997 percent during their time in office. That translates into a spectacular annual return of 32 per cent."

The HBR put Ambani in the list of "up-through-the-ranks leaders" along with the Samsung boss.

"Among the up-through-the-ranks leaders on our list are Yun Jong-Yong, who joined Samsung straight out of college and worked there 30 years before becoming CEO, and Mukesh Ambani, who joined RIL in 1981, when it was still a textile company run by his father.

"These CEOs may not all be household names, but here's an objective look at who delivered the top results over the long term," HBR said, ranking Steve Jobs as the top CEO in the world.

Mr Jobs, it said, delivered a whopping 3,188 percent industry-adjusted return (34 percent compounded annually) after he rejoined Apple as CEO in 1997, when the company was in dire straits. From that time until the end of September 2009, Apple's market value increased by $150 billion.

He was followed by Mr Yun Jong-Yong, who ran South Korea's Samsung Electronics from 1996 to 2008.

HBR said none of the top three CEOs had an MBA. Mr Ambani and Mr Chambers were the only two in the top five to hold degrees in business administration.