Last year's position : 3

How the mighty have fallen. In previous years Ballmer found himself second and fourth on this annual list, now he just about scrapes in at number 48.

In truth, Ballmer probably dined out for a while on the novelty of being the Microsoft boss who wasn't Bill Gates but now the old associations have returned - "He acts like a COO, which is fine," said one panellist - and people still tend to think of Gates when they think of Microsoft.

The fact that Ballmer was famously best man at Gates' wedding tells us all we need to know - a case of 'always the best man never the groom'.

Ballmer is well known in tech circles for his dancing, and when you can say that about a man, it's probably not meant as a compliment. He is a motivator, spokesman and larger-than-life character in many respects, and he took a bullet for his old pal Bill during the anti-trust case, but now he appears to be sinking quickly into the shadow of the man he met back at Harvard in the early 1970s.