Wednesday 12 March 2014

The Top Ten Most Powerful Business Women in the World

 Did you know that women control more than 60 percent of all personal wealth in the U.S., and they also account for more than 50 percent of all stock ownership? t’s been an important year for women across the globe. With newly-appointed female CEOs and women-led corporate crisis aversions, there are many powerful women in business who deserve recognition for their efforts.  Here are the top 10 business women to watch.
 

1. Sheryl Sandberg 

In her book Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg detailed her intense negotiations with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as she was being courted for the company's chief operating officer position. "I could play hardball," she wrote with regards to the offer. More than half a decade after accepting the COO gig, Sandberg is likely thankful she stuck to her guns during negotiations. She is now one of the world's youngest self-made women billionaires. With Facebook's share prices up more than 130% in the last 12 months as of mid-Feb. 2014, the mother of two appears on the Billionaires list for the first time, largely due to her 12 million shares in the social networking firm. A former Google executive, she was wooed to Facebook by Zuckerberg in 2007 to provide a sense of order to the fledgling startup run by college dropouts. She's since become a foil for Zuckerberg, pushing the company toward strong earnings performances with improvements in mobile strategy. In addition to her role at Facebook, Sandberg also sits on the board at the Walt Disney Co 

  2. Indra Nooyi

Nooyi has been busy pushing changes through PepsiCo this year. For starters, she boosted quarterly results -- revenue jumped 1.2% to $13 billion -- with higher prices and sales of the company's snacks like Doritos and Cheetos. Under her urging, PepsiCo is researching a new sweetener that could result in trading places with rival No. 1 Coca-Cola. 2013 SPOTLIGHT: Her total compensation dropped 17% after the company phased out option awards for top executives and offered stock awards for long-term performance.  
3. Irene Rosenfeld

In October 2012 the formal division of Kraft into two separate companies -- an $18 billion (sales) North American grocery business that retains the name and a $36 billion (sales) global snacks company, Mondelez -- was completed. Rosenfeld, CEO of Kraft, took a bet to lead the new business. "We've set some very aggressive growth targets for this new company," Rosenfeld says of the 5% to 7% revenue increase she's promised over the long term and the 5% promised for 2013. Part of her plan is to quickly grow her cookie, chocolate and gum-and-candy brands in the developing BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) markets and plant the seeds in "next-wave markets" like the Middle East, Africa, Indonesia and Latin America. 2013 SPOTLIGHT: Mondelez is a made-up word meant to evoke the phrase "delicious world" in a variety of romance languages 
4. Virginia Rometty

Rometty heads up the biggest computer company by revenue -- yes, bigger even than Google, Tencent or Yahoo. Generating $104.5 billion annually, IBM saw a $16.6 billion profit last year. 
 5. Meg Whitman

Meg Whitman, the CEO of Hewlett Packard, has been earning a $1 salary since she joined the company in 2011, but that is reportedly going to increase to $1.5 million this year. Since joining HP, she has been trying to reinvent the company. Her project Moonshot Systems is betting on tiny servers 80% smaller than industry averages and much more energy efficient. HP has sold them to Facebook among others. She held posts at Hasbro, Disney, and Procter & Gamble before landing as CEO at eBay in 1998. She led the online auction company for 10 years; its shares still make up the bulk of her fortune. She spent nearly $180 million on a failed bid for the California governor's office in 2010 .
 6. Marissa Mayer

Marissa Mayer's first edict after taking the top spot at Yahoo! in July 2012 after 13 years at Google: a major overhaul of Flickr, the site's photo-sharing service, followed by a home-page redesign and a string of acquisitions, including $1.1 billion for blogging platform Tumblr and $30 million for story-shortener Summly. Mayer faces intense pressure to modernize the pioneer portal with 700 million monthly users. 2013 SPOTLIGHT: The new mom has taken a lot of flak for her own "too-short" maternity leave and for squashing a work-from-home option for employees. Still, she recently announced a generous parental leave policy: eight weeks for both moms and dads plus $500. 
7. Arianna Huffington

While her focus remains on her Pulitzer Prize-winning Huffington Post, the 62-year-old cofounder and editor-in-chief has created a separate niche for herself on the personal and spiritual well-being circuit. And she has an app for that: "GPS for the Soul" which measures heart rate levels and offers de-stressers such as poetry and music. 2013 SPOTLIGHT: The 8-year-old site hit 250 million comments in May.  
 8. Sheri McCoy

One of the most powerful women in the cosmetics industry; Avon's new CEO commands a $11-billion-a-year beauty company with more than 6 million active sales reps in 100 countries. One year with McCoy at the helm, the door-to-door vendor reported a rebound in shares after struggling with low earnings and multiple takeover bids by fragrance maker Coty under her predecessor, Andrea Jung. Before being taped for the the CEO seat, McCoy spent 30 years at Johnson & Johnson, where she was vice chair and oversaw 60% of its $65 billion in revenue. 2013 SPOTLIGHT: Announced plans to slash more than 400 jobs and exit the Irish market. 
 9. Laura Lang

Time Inc. chief executive Laura Lang is a businesswoman leading a company of journalists. As Time Inc.'s first CEO from outside the industry, she has guided the company's focus to the evolving digital market. Lang is uniquely suited to the effort: as CEO of Digitas from 2008 to 2012, she grew the integrated advertising company into a leading global digital marketing agency. Lang made her first major deal at Time Inc. with Apple in June, when she led the company in making 20 Time Inc. magazines available through Apple's Newsstand app. Lang's confidence in dealing with the digital side of media will be needed to reverse the negative trend at Time Inc, which has declined 11% in the last five years.
10. Angela Ahrendts

Impressive marks for Ahrendts' seven year run as Burberry CEO. Not only has she revitalized the century-old fashion house with a cool quotient but revenues have nearly tripled to more than $3 billion and stocks have returned 300%. Social media remains a cornerstone of her strategy: Burberry's Spring/Summer 2013 campaign went viral, with the teaser video gaining over 1 million YouTube views in just 48 hours. The British label is the largest luxury apparel and accessories company by market cap in the U.K. and the leading luxury brand on Facebook (15 million fans) and Twitter (over 2 million followers across 10 regional accounts in 10 languages). 2013 SPOTLIGHT: Revenue in the Asia-Pacific region, accounting for some 35% of sales, is up 13%.

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