For over a decade Forbes has documented the most notable career crashes (see the 2024 list here), so we thought it appropriate to look at the business leaders who have bounced back in 2024, bringing their businesses and careers back from the brink. Yes, the mighty can fall, but they can also make their way back to the top.
Donald Trump
If there is one man who knows how to make a comeback, it’s Donald Trump. Despite having three outstanding criminal cases and awaiting sentencing after becoming a convicted felon, the 78-year-old will be sworn in as the United States’ 47th President on January 20th after winning a closely-watched presidential race. Last time he was in office, Trump left the White House twice impeached, drowning in debt and with a disapproval rating of 62%, the highest of any President leaving office other than Richard Nixon. Now, a majority of Americans approve of his handling of the presidential transition.
Today, on the heels of his decisive election victory, Trump is more popular than ever. He’s currently worth $6.2 billion, down from a peak of $8.1 billion in May.
Elon Musk
When Elon Musk landed on Forbes’ list of most notable career crashes in 2022, his new ownership of Twitter (now X) was all to blame. In his short tenure as CEO before Linda Yaccarino stepped in, he botched layoffs, mocked users, flipped on policies and worried investors across his business portfolio, most notably Tesla.
Today, he’s the richest man in the world. In December he became the first person to surpass a $400 billion net worth, thanks to a new $350 billion valuation for SpaceX. It accounts for a more than $150 billion jump in wealth this year, thanks in part to his 13% stake in Tesla, whose stock is up 70% this year, and an estimated 54% stake in xAI, which investors reportedly valued at $50 billion in November. Beyond his wealth, Musk also holds the top spot in Trump’s new brain trust. After spending $200 million to get Trump elected, he was tapped to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, which will advise on ways to cut government spending, alongside Vivek Ramaswamy.
Adam Neumann
The founder and former CEO of WeWork returned to the headlines this year in a series of splashy commitments to purchase the co-working company out of bankruptcy. Under Neumann’s leadership, WeWork went from a startup valued at $47 billion to a failed IPO before he stepped down as CEO. In February, Neumann announced he’d buy back the company for $650 million alongside Dan Loeb’s hedge fund Third Point, but the offer was ultimately rebuffed. Instead, he turned his sights into developing his latest real estate startup. In August, Neumann’s Flow quietly opened up its first property in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The startup, which is the billionaire’s latest attempt at building co-living and working spaces, raised $350 million from Andreessen Horowitz in 2022 to build “the future of living.” Its two other branded properties in Fort Lauderdale and Miami, Florida, opened in April.
All of these new investments have contributed to Neumann’s continued billionaire status; his $2.3 billion net worth comes from a nearly 10% stake in WeWork, majority stakes in apartment buildings worth $1 billion before debt and the over $1 billion 2022 valuation of Flow.
Michael Saylor
Bitcoin maximalist and MicroStrategy chairman Michael Saylor had an epic 2024. The former rocket scientist has turned MicroStrategy into one of the biggest institutional holders of bitcoin, owning 439,000 coins now worth an approximate $44 billion. While some were skeptical of the software company’s extreme bitcoin holdings––the company now describes itself as “the world’s first and largest Bitcoin Treasury Company”––it’s paying off. MicroStrategy’s stock is up 403% this year, outstripping bitcoin’s 137% gain and the S&P 500’s 24% return.
Saylor has only cashed in on stock price surge, bolstered even further by its mid-December inclusion in the Nasdaq 100 stock index, the basis for the popular Invesco QQQ exchange-traded fund. All in all, Saylor’s net-worth has more than doubled in the last year, thanks to his personal bitcoin holdings and his stake in MicroStrategy. He’s currently worth $8.7 billion.
Fran Horowitz
The CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch is enjoying another year of growth for the millennial and GenZ-loved apparel company. Under the leadership of Fran Horowitz, who came in as CEO in 2017, the company’s stock has risen from an all-time low of under $10 per share to today’s $149. It’s helped it become one of the top mid-cap stocks in the United States this year, with a 500% growth since 2023 and 60% this year. Horowitz’s focus on inclusive sizing, a broadened product range and a new brand image targeting professionals has propelled twelve-month sales to $4.8 billion in December, up 20% from last year. New this year is a wedding dress business.
Horowitz has propelled the company’s sales and financial success all while fighting off associations of its past. In October, the Department of Justice charged former CEO Mike Jeffried with sex trafficking and interstate prostitution, to which he pleaded not guilty.
Bernard Looney
Just one year after the former CEO of BP abruptly resigned from the job after failing to disclose past relationships with female colleagues at the company, Bernard Looney is joining the board of Prometheus Hyperscale, a Wyoming-based data company. In May, Prometheus Hyperscale signed a partnership agreement with Oko, a nuclear energy company backed by Open AI CEO Sam Altman. In his new position as chairman of the board, Looney will be leading the company’s effort to build its flagship $10 billion data center in Evanston. In the last month, he’s also joined the board of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc).
Prior to his resignation in September 2023, Looney had a long career at the british oil and gas giant, climbing the ranks from a post-graduate drilling engineer to chief executive for just three years. While BP said he technically didn’t breach company rules, he wasn’t “fully transparent” and did have to forfeit more than $40 million in compensation and some of his previous bonus for “knowingly mis[leading] the board” in an act of “serious misconduct.”
John Galliano
Talk about leaving at the top. After leading Maison Margiela as creative director for the last ten years and stunning the fashion world with January’s Maison Margiela Artisanal show, John Galliano is set to depart the French luxury fashion house. He’s responsible for the brand’s infamous Tabi shoes and a 23% growth in sales in 2023, according to Vogue Business. As for what’s next after Maison Margiela, he’s tight-lipped. “When the time is right, all will be revealed,” he wrote on an Instagram post.
It’s a sharp contrast to how the British designer first started working with the brand. The Maison Margiela job was his first after a scandalous exit from Dior in 2011, where he’d been creative director since 1996. Galliano was largely credited for turning Christian Dior into a multimillion-dollar brand, but was fired during Paris Fashion Week after videos surfaced of him making antisemitic remarks. His comeback from fashion world exile to fashion and internet fame was so grand it’s been charted on the Amazon Prime documentary High and Low: John Galliano, released in March.
Sankaet Pathak
It turns out it is possible to have a career crash and a comeback all in one year. In May, Sankaet Pathank, founder and CEO of the fintech Synapse was ousted from the company as a bankruptcy judge removed existing management and appointed an independent Chapter 11 trustee to oversee the company. The struggling banking-as-a-service company finally filed for bankruptcy this year after a year of searching for banking partners and potential buyers. In its wake it’s frozen tens of thousands of customers out of $114 million of their own funds, but lawyers say up to 20 million end-users are at risk.
As the court goes on with bankruptcy proceedings, Pathak is already looking at, and funding, his new venture. In August he told TechCrunch he’d raised $11 million from Tribe Capital, among others, for his new company, Foundation, a robotics startup that aims to create humanoid robots to address the labor shortage.