Business heroes and zeros 2010

Irene Rosenfeld: The Kraft boss is among our zeroes of the year. She pledged to retain a key Cadbury factory in Somerdale, near Bristol, in order to win support for the US food group’s £11bn bid for the chocolate maker this year, only to announce its closure, with the loss of 400 jobs, days after gaining control Photograph: Mike Cassese/Reuters

Bart Becht: Reckitt Benckiser’s CEO deserves a quick heckle after shattering British records for executive pay – taking home more than £90m in cash and shares in one year – bringing the total he has made from running the maker of everything from Cillit Bang kitchen cleaner to Durex condoms to more than £200m since 2005 Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Angela Merkel: The German chancellor was quite happy for Germany’s juggernaut economy to benefit from an artificially low currency but seems less keen to give too much back. She opposed measures to stabilise the eurozone, through the creation of a common EU bond and the expansion of the €750bn (£636bn) emergency fund to bail out cash-strapped governments in the region Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters

Guy Hands: The founder of Terra Firma, lost plenty of face this year when a New York court quickly rejected a fraud claim he had launched against Citigroup over his ill-fated £4.2bn purchase of EMI music group in 2007. Hands had accused heavyweight Citigroup banker David Wormsley of lying about a nonexistent rival bid for EMI in May 2007 to encourage a rival offer, which he said caused him to overpay for the now-troubled business. A New York jury threw the case out after just four hours of deliberation Photograph: Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters

But naturally the zero of the year award can only go to BP’s former chief executive, the gaffe-prone Tony Hayward. Last month, Hayward finally admitted that BP had been forced to make up its oil disaster response in the Gulf of Mexico as it went along. This, he said, had made the group look 'fumbling' and 'incompetent' in the eyes of the public. Hayward also admitted the contingency plans drawn up by the company had been completely inadequate. 'We did not have the equipment to contain and disperse [oil] on the seabed. In fact, the equipment had never been designed or built. It simply did not exist,' said Hayward Photograph: Sean Gardner/Reuters

Christopher Pissarides: Britain’s new Nobel laureate in economics is among our heroes for almost immediately delivering a stern warning to chancellor George Osborne that cuts to social security benefits in October’s comprehensive spending review risked consigning an entire category of jobless workers to a spiral of poverty, disillusionment and long-term unemployment Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images

Roger Carr: The CBI’s president-in-waiting quickly broke ranks by declaring his support for the Labour-initiated 50p rate of income tax on Britain’s richest earners – in sharp contrast to the business organisation’s vigorous campaign against the policy Photograph: PR

Warren Buffet (left) and Bill Gates (right), who have both been the world’s richest man at one time or another, founded the Giving Pledge in June to encourage other mega-wealthy people to give away large chunks of their fortunes. So far, at least 57 American billionaires have joined and pledged to donate at least half of their fortunes, a total of $125bn. They include New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, the currency speculator, and CNN founder Ted Turner Photograph: Getty Images

James Dyson: In a rare case of British job creation, the inventor and entrepreneur this year doubled the number of engineers employed at his company’s Tetbury Hill headquarters in Malmesbury Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian

Paul Smith, the multimillionaire founder of Celador International, creator of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire format. The British creators in July won $269m in damages from the Disney entertainment empire in a US court after a six-year battle over unpaid royalties. 'It’s been debilitating and it’s been very, very difficult at times. But I’m delighted that in a David against Goliath story, David has won,' said Smith after the verdict Photograph: Graham Turner