Maria Ramos

Maria Ramos has led Barclays Africa since 2013, when she oversaw Absa Group Limited’s acquisition of some of Barclay Bank’s African entities and changed the group’s name to Barclays Africa Group Limited. The Portuguese-South African is about halfway through a three-year growth strategy she announced in 2014 to expand the bank’s operations outside of South Africa. So far, it seems to be going well: at the end of last year, the company’s return on equity was the highest since 2008, and revenue from operations outside of South Africa grew by 9% in the period ending June 2015. Now, Ramos is working on acquiring operations in Egypt and Zimbabwe from her parent company, Barclays Plc. —Claire Groden