Alan Mulally, Fortune Businessperson of the Year

As the year comes closer and closer to its unavoidable end, tops, charts and other competitions are being created to tell us who was who in the past 12 months. That is even more true for the automotive industry, as everybody expects to see how the numbers of 2010 look like compared to the ones of the troubled 2009.

Fortune, one of the most high regarded publications on the planet, has been hard at work over the past five weeks, trying to figure out, with the help of the readers, who deserves the title of Businessperson of the Year.

The public spoke their mind and decided to give the title to Ford's CEO, Alan Mulally, the man who led Ford through 2009 bankruptcy-free, launched and, most importantly, stuck with the One Ford strategy and managed to give the carmaker another prestigious award, the title of Marketer of the Year, handed by Ad Age.

Mulally had to fend off several other big names of the world's industries, with the most bitter of the battles being fought against the likes of Apple's Steve Jobs or Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Ev Williams from Twitter or Jeff Bezos from Amazon were also in the race.

Ironically, Ford became the “in your face” company it is today by using the services and mediums provided by the people Mulally managed to steal the crown from. Ford was everywhere these past two years, but mostly on Facebook and Twitter, two tools it used with a great deal of success to launch the formidable Fiesta for instance.