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HONG KONG () — The Wall Street Journal today released its first-ever global "Top 50 Women to Watch" rankings, which is designed to recognize women who have achieved noteworthy successes in business in the past year, as well as those who are poised to play important roles in business in the years to come.
It includes women from Asia, Europe and the Americas and is divided into six distinct lists as follows:
A total of nine Asian women from Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore and India appear in the Wall Street Journal's inaugural list.
Top contenders in the various categories are as follows (please note that a full list of the "Top 50 Women to Watch" can be found at the foot of this release):
"Running the Show"
Hewlett-Packard's Carly Fiorina tops the 13-strong "Running the Show" group, followed by Margaret Whitman of eBay Inc. and Andrea Jung of Avon Products. At No. 9, Xie Qihua, chairwoman of Shanghai Baosteel Group, is the highest-ranking Asian in this listing, while Ho Ching, executive director and chief executive of Temasek Holdings, comes in at No. 12.
Xie Qihua started her career in Shanghai Baosteel as an engineer. She worked her way up the leadership chain to head China's largest iron and steel producer with 100,000 employees and US$22 billion in assets. Xie has devoted much of her energy to grooming Baosteel for the global stage, and is determined that the company will become one of the world's largest steelmakers.
Ho Ching heads Singapore's Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd., Singapore's state investment company. Temasek has stakes in dozens of companies that operate in nearly every key sector of Singapore's economy. Its listed assets account for about one-third of the market capitalization of the Singapore stock exchange and nearly half of the benchmark Straits Times Index. She first made her mark in the business world by straightening out government-linked Singapore Technologies, turning it into an US$8.88 billion conglomerate.
"In Line To Lead"
Female executives at U.S. firms dominate the "In Line To Lead" rankings, taking 17 out of the 24 slots. Karen Katen, president of Pfizer Global Pharmaceuticals, heads the list, followed by Marjorie Magner, chairman and chief executive of the global consumer group at Citigroup, and Indra Nooyi, the president and chief financial officer of PepsiCo.
Female executives from Asia make an impressive showing in this category with no less than six out of the 24 slots.
At No. 3, Indra Nooyi was born and raised in a middle-class family in India. Today, she is second in command at PepsiCo and has played a key role in remaking the snack and beverage giant. Her biggest moment came in late 2000 when she was one of the lead negotiators on the US$13.8 billion acquisition of Quaker Oats Co. and the Gatorade brand.
Ms. Nooyi's tenacity and savvy strategic thinking on the Quaker deal were rewarded in May 2001 when she was given the additional title of president and joined the Pepsi board.
Fumiko Hayashi, who is listed at No. 13, made her name in the male-dominated Japanese auto industry by selling more cars. She became the top salesperson in BMW Tokyo's key showroom a month after joining the company, and turned the business around in its weakest showroom six months after her transfer there. Today, she is BMW Tokyo's president. Sales are exceeding last year's levels and she is aiming for a gain of 10% this year. Ms. Hayashi also hopes to enlist more women as dealers and appoint more female managers.
Arguably the most influential woman in China's financial system, Wu Xiaoling is deputy governor of the People's Bank of China in charge of monetary policy at China's central bank. Listed at No. 18 in the "In Line To Lead" group, Wu has had a hand in most of the major financial reforms undertaken by the country during the past two decades. Wu's unprecedented challenge ahead is to effectively use interest-rate adjustments and other financial tools to manage growth.
Fellow PRC compatriot, Yang Mianmian, enters the Journal's "In Line To Lead" list at No. 19. Together with Haier's chief executive officer, Yang has transformed Haier from a small refrigerator workshop into a home-appliance giant with global sales of more than US$9.6 billion last year. In the 1990s, she spearheaded Haier's overseas expansion into developed markets such as the U.S. and Germany. This gamble has paid off: Haier estimated in 2002 that it had more than half the U.S. market for small refrigerators.
Listed at No. 21, Naina Lal Kidwai, deputy chief executive, India of HSBC, has participated in, and profited from, India's evolution from a backwater of global markets closed to international capital to one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. At the top of HSBC, she has been part of every step of the liberalization of the Indian economy and has helped Indian companies raise billions at home and abroad. Though Kidwai has been offered positions in Hong Kong, London and New York throughout her career, she has stuck with India, where she could help shape policy through different industry and government committees.
Lastly, at No. 24 in the "In Line To Lead" listing, fast-rising star Yoon Song Yee is the highest-ranking female executive at SK Telecom, South Korea's largest telecom service provider. She leads the company's communication-intelligence task force to create a new generation of mobile-phone services and to design the next generation of networking tools to facilitate wireless Internet access via mobile phones. Yoon also advises the Presidential Advisory Council and other government agencies on science and technology, and was elected as a New Asian Leader by the World Economic Forum this year.
"The Owners"
Chat-show veteran Oprah Winfrey takes the No.1 spot in "The Owners" rankings as head of her own production company, Harpo Inc. In addition to "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which airs in 110 countries and generates the bulk of her company's US$275 million in annual revenue, Ms. Winfrey controls "O" (the Oprah magazine) and Oxygen, the women's cable network she helped launch in 1999.
Kim Sung Joo, who heads up South Korean luxury goods retailing companies Sungjoo International and Sungjoo Design Tech & Distribution, ranks No. 2 in "The Owners" category. When she first founded a company to sell luxury goods in South Korea in 1990, her biggest problem was not uncooperative suppliers or restrictive government regulations-it was family opposition to her desire to be a businesswoman. Her companies have exclusive rights to sell luxury brands such as Marks & Spencer and MCM in South Korea, and within 10 years she says she wants to create the Louis Vuitton of Asia.
And in third place in "The Owners" listing is Fredy Bush, who persuaded Xinhua News Agency, Beijing's official wire service, to grant her and her partners what amounted to a 20-year monopoly on its market data with exclusive distribution rights outside China. Today, the 46-year-old businesswoman from Utah is chief executive officer of Xinhua Financial Network (XFN).
"The Inheritors"
Abigail P. Johnson, president of Fidelity Management & Research Co., heads "The Inheritors" list but she certainly hasn't been able to coast in her new job. In 2001, amid the stock market's dive, she became president of the Boston-based company's money-management arm. Then, she steered the company's funds through the share-trading scandals-the worst in the industry's history. Fidelity emerged unscathed. Now, Ms. Johnson is trying to do what no one else has achieved in recent years: Reverse the market-share slide at Fidelity, the largest U.S. mutual fund company, with about US$1 trillion in assets. But she's remaining tight-lipped over potential succession plans at Fidelity, headed up by her 74-year-old father, Edward C. Johnson III. She's sticking to the official line that Mr. Johnson has no plans to retire.
"The Watchdogs"
At the top of "The Watchdogs" category is Elizabeth Grossman, acting regional attorney for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A firm believer that discrimination still pervades plenty of industries, she has tackled dozens of age, race, sex and disability bias cases since she joined the U.S. agency in 1993, and was the commission's lead attorney in negotiating the settlement to win Nynex and Bell Atlantic phone workers who had taken time off for pregnancy or maternity leave service credit toward their pension benefits. She's fresh from a landmark US$54 million settlement that she helped hammer out with Morgan Stanley, with the firm agreeing to settle claims from dozens of women who had accused it of systematically denying them promotion and pay increases.
"The Grant Giver"
Patty Stonesifer claims sole possession of "The Grant Giver" category as president and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private philanthropy. A high-tech millionaire, she took her leave from the business world when she was 40, but was soon propelled back to help Bill Gates channel his personal fortune into preventing and treating some of the world's worst diseases: AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The foundation has current assets of US$27 billion, which is set to rise to US$30 billion under new pledges from its founder.
The rankings were decided by a team of Wall Street Journal reporters and editors in bureaus around the world who identified potential candidates. The Journal also sought nominations from outside the newspaper. In all, around 550 nominations were received.
The "Top 50 Women to Watch" rankings and report are published in today's Asian Wall Street Journal, and also can be found at http://www.wsj.com.
The full listings of the rankings are below.
"Running the Show"
"In Line to Lead"
"The Owners"
"The Inheritors"
"The Watchdogs"
"The Grant Giver"
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About The Asian Wall Street Journal
The Asian Wall Street Journal is the leader in global business news for Asia. Since 1976, it has provided indispensable news and analysis of regional and global business developments for an influential pan-Asian audience of corporate and government decision makers. The Asian Journal has been voted Asia's "most important business reading" in every ABRS study since the survey's inception in 1985. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 and was awarded the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award for "Excellence in Newspapers — English Language" in 2001, 2002 and 2003. In 2004, it won the top SOPA awards in the "Excellence in Reporting," "Excellence in Feature Writing," "Excellence in Business Reporting" and "Excellence in Opinion Writing" categories.
Edited and published in Hong Kong, The Asian Journal is printed in nine Asian cities-Bangkok, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo — and distributed throughout the Asia Pacific region. More than 75% of its subscribers are Asian.
For more information, please contact:
Nadia Stoyle, Corporate Communications, Asia: Tel: +852-2831 6482 or e-mail: nadia.stoyle@dowjones.com
Kejia Wu, Corporate Communications, Asia: Tel: +86 10 6581 4090 x 201 or e-mail: kejia.wu@dowjones.com
Sharon Teo, Corporate Communications, Asia: Tel: +65 6415 4274 or e-mail: sharon.teo@dowjones.com
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