Most Powerful Women International

most powerful women international

This year, Fortune has ranked the 50 Most Powerful Women based outside the U.S. Banco Santander group executive chairman Ana Botín repeats as No. 1, in a time of economic and political volatility for all. The 2016 list spans 19 countries and is comprised of 16% new names. By Rupali Arora, Erika Fry, Audrey Shi, and Claire Zillman
<a href="http://fortune.com/most-powerful-women/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Click here to see the "U.S. Most Powerful Women" list.</a>

The boss at Santander, the Eurozone’s largest bank by market value, leads our international list after two years atop Fortune’s Europe, Middle East and Africa ranking. In 2015, Botin steered her organization—<a href="http://beta.fortune.com/global500/banco-santander-75" target="_blank">No. 74 on the Global 500</a>—through volatile times, and even eked out a small growth in profit when measured in local currency. But, as was the case for most in international finance, it’s been a tough year: Santander’s market value has slid 30% since August 2015, in part because of concerns around the bank’s second largest market—recession-stricken Brazil. In Spain, Santander’s slow-growing home market, the company announced it will shutter hundreds of branches. Meanwhile, in the U.S, it failed its “stress test” for the third year in a row, and in the UK—its largest market (and where Botin was awarded honorary damehood last year)—consequences of the Brexit vote loom.

Ana Botín

Bhattacharya’s profile has risen during her three-year tenure atop India’s largest bank, a 210-year-old institution that ranks No. 232 on Fortune’s Global 500. This year, there was much speculation that she might succeed Raghuram Rajan, governor of the Reserve Bank of India. She didn’t get that job, but at SBI, she has continued her high-profile battle with the bank’s bad loans, while courting overseas partners like KKR to invest in the stressed assets. In May, she also orchestrated SBI’s merger with six other groups, a plan that, once complete, will result in one of largest lenders in Asia. Though her term leading the bank is set to expire in October, most expect the government will extend her time so she can see the efforts through.

Arundhati Bhattacharya

Kocher’s appointment in May as CEO of the world’s biggest non-state owned electricity company catapulted her into the history books. She is the first Frenchwoman to lead a company in Paris’s CAC 40 stock market index. Kocher, who previously served as Engie’s deputy chief executive and its CFO, took over after the company’s revenue dropped 21.8% (6.4% in local currency) to $77.5 billion and posted a net loss of $5.1 billion after it wrote down $9.7 billion in assets last year. As it grapples with low energy prices and sluggish energy demand in Western Europe, Kocher has promised to sell assets worth $16.7 billion, including coal-fired and gas power plants, and invest $24.5 billion in renewable energy in the next three years.

Isabelle Kocher

In a decade at the helm, Chua has grown Singtel into Southeast Asia’s largest telecommunications company, boasting $51 billion in market capitalization, and earnings of $2.8 billion last year—70% of which came from overseas operations. Working with volatile global currencies has not daunted Chua, a fitness aficionado, who is investing $1.8 billion in the two largest mobile operators in Thailand and India. The astute technocrat has also made sizable investments in cybersecurity, hoping to capitalize on Singapore’s status as the most digital nation in the world. It is paying off: ICT (information communication and technology) revenue was up 18% in the first quarter of fiscal 2017, offsetting declines in the telecom’s consumer division, thanks to the September 2015, $810 million acquisition of US-based Trustwave.

Chua Sock Koong

Even rival bankers acknowledge that Kochhar is a visionary. After seven years at the helm of India’s largest private sector lender, with consolidated assets of $139 billion, she has overhauled the nation's consumer retail business. Though bad loans took a toll on income growth this year, Kochhar has engaged turnaround experts to help ditch those distressed assets, and in August she went a step further, signing an MoU with US-based buyout fund Apollo Global Management to set up an asset reconstruction company. This year, she also hired a chief technology and digital officer to help maintain the bank's digital edge and recently launched apps that can book train tickets, pay taxes, and even do remittances. She also unveiled iwork@home this March enabling female employees to work from home for a year.

Chanda Kochhar

A year after completing the $7.1 billion acquisition of U.S. brands as part of the Reynolds-Lorillard merger, Cooper, CEO since 2010, is already seeing the deal pay off. Formerly known as Imperial Tobacco Group, the company’s larger U.S. presence is proving to be a growth area, as its Winston and Kool brands have gained market share. That’s helped offset losses in Iraq and Syria, where geopolitical events have hammered sales, since the U.S. is now the company’s biggest single tobacco market.

Alison Cooper

Sabancı is steering her family’s $17.6 billion business through especially challenging and uncertain times in Turkey. The conglomerate, with a group of companies spanning the financial, industrial, retail and energy sectors, is the one of the largest in a country beset by terrorist attacks, the region’s refugee crisis and a failed coup this year. Even so, the holding company has some momentum: its fast-growing power business (half of which comes from renewable sources) helped revenues and profits climb a respective 9% and 8% in local currency in 2015. Sabancı, who founded a university in her family’s name in 1994, remains an active philanthropist and advocate for women’s development in her country and around the world. 
 
For more on Güler Sabancı, read "<a href="http://fortune.com/guler-sabanci-turkey/" target="_blank">Leading in Times of Chaos</a>."

Güler Sabancı

When Ho returned from her surprise six-month sabbatical last October, it was seen as a sign that she was beginning to back away from her role atop Singapore’s state-owned investment firm. Her likely successor Lee Theng Kiat was given charge of investment strategy and all employees--save Ho and the CFO. Ho has tried to pass the reins before—in 2009, to former BHP Billiton CEO Chip Goodyear—only to reclaim them after strategic “differences” emerged. But for now, Ho remains the boss at the Temasek, the influential sovereign wealth fund where she has served as Executive Director since 2002. Under her leadership, the firm’s $180 billion portfolio has broadened beyond Asia—Gilead Sciences and Monsanto are now among its holdings, for example—and posted an annual shareholder return of 6% over the past decade (though it was down 9% in 2015). Ho also made news this year for a number of non-business related reasons: an inadvertent Facebook post involving a middle-finger-wielding monkey, which she later apologized for; an injury sustained in a hoverboard crash, and an $11 dinosaur-print purse she carried on a state visit to the White House. Ho, an engineer by training, is married to Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s current prime minister.

Ho Ching

 A year of negative interest rates, political and economic uncertainty in Europe, an increasing regulatory burden and a few steep one-time charges challenged SEB, the 160-year old Nordic bank Falkengren has helmed since 2005. Profits slid 14% in local currency (30% in dollars) and revenues were down 21% (36% in dollars) in 2015. The company also divested its German asset management business. To counter these challenges, Falkengren laid out a 10-year plan for the bank that focuses on digital technology and customer service. The Swedish executive, the lone independent director on the Volkswagen board, had a challenging year there as well when a fuel-standards scandal hit the company.

Annika Falkengren

Barra earned another promotion in June—her third in three years—to co-COO of Walgreens Boots Alliance, the $103 billion global pharmacy chain that is run by her partner Stefano Pessina. (Though the recently merged, much-enlarged entity is based in Chicago, Barra, who oversees, among other things, international retail and global brands, is based in Europe.) Indeed, the scope of Barra’s responsibilities is vast: she also leads the company’s Pharmaceutical Wholesale division—which extends to 200,000 healthcare providers in 19 countries—as well as supply chain, communications, HR and IT functions. Barra, an Italian who began her career as a pharmacist, built her own small business before merging it with Pessina’s in the 1980s. They kept building—and hundreds of deals later, their company ranks <a href="http://beta.fortune.com/global500/walgreens-47" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">No. 47</a> on Fortune’s Global 500.

Ornella Barra

As the Chinese economy cooled, domestic air conditioner sales also caught a chill. Last year, Gree—the country’s largest air conditioning manufacturer—saw revenue plunge by 29%, to $15.9 billion. But Dong Mingzhu, Gree’s ultraconfident chairwoman and president, had a strategy to diversify the company’s offerings that began with a mobile phone. Gree Phone 1—a smartphone equipped with air conditioner and home security control systems—was touted by the chairwoman as “unbreakable for three years.” Despite Dong’s insistence that the phone would sell hundreds of millions of units and compete with Xiaomi, the Gree Phone 1 never made it to shelves in 2015. Instead, the company launched the Gree Phone 2 this past June—and now plans to build green vehicles. But until the numbers can speak for themselves, Dong won’t be moving up on our list.

Dong Mingzhu

As China’s economy decelerated, Wang—China’s highest-paid auto CEO—pounced on the middle-class’ eagerness to trade sedans for SUVS at a time of rock-bottom oil prices. After setting up Great Wall Motors’ premium SUV brand, Haval, as a standalone brand in 2013, Wang masterminded Haval’s “Red and Blue” strategy—targeting families with the 'red logo' sport SUVs, and younger, trendy drivers with 'blue logo' city SUVs. Haval’s runaway success has saved Great Wall’s now-slumping sedan sales: net sales in 2015 grew 19% to $11.64 billion. Wang joined the company in 1991, just as Great Wall was transitioning from a small village-owned agricultural vehicle factory into a private carmaker, and became CEO in 2002.

Wang Fengying

Li Dang—granddaughter of famed Qing dynasty politician Li Hongzhang—joined China General Technology in 2000, when the company was just two years old. She is now in her second decade as the President of the $28 billion state-owned trading conglomerate, which runs businesses in plant construction, corporate real estate management, pharmaceutical production, and engineering consulting. A member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Li is also an advocate for the environment. In March 2015, she spoke out about the need to reduce manufacturing waste in the country’s aluminum, cement, glass, steel, and shipping industries, and more recently called for an increase in funding for green companies.

Li Dang

Martello, a former Walmart executive and Nestle CFO, has run the world’s largest food company’s Zone AOA—Asia, Oceania, and Africa (92 countries)—since April 2015. She was tapped for the role at a time of crisis: the $15 billion division, key to Nestle’s emerging markets growth strategy, was faltering in China. Then, in Martello’s second month on the job, a food safety scare involving Nestle’s ubiquitous Maggi noodle brand erupted in India. That scandal, from which Nestle has still not fully recovered, cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars.  But Martello gets credit for cleaning up the mess quickly and getting business back on track. Even so, Martello, a Chinese-American who grew up in the Philippines and who serves on Alibaba’s board, will not be Nestle’s next top boss; Ulf Mark Schneider, the CEO of Fresenius, a German healthcare company, was named Paul Bulcke’s successor in June.

Wan Ling Martello

Barbizet caught the world’s attention when she was named the first female boss of luxury auction house Christie’s in 2014, but shrinking profits and an exodus of top staff has cast a shadow over the 250-year-old business. A lackluster contemporary art market has hammered Christie’s sales, down 29%, to $3 billion, in the first half of 2016. But Barbizet, an opera buff, is pivoting to online art sales—a booming segment. She also remains CEO of Artémis, the Pinault family’s holding company, with assets worth $31 billion, and vice chair of his luxury empire Kering, whose portfolio includes Gucci and Saint Laurent.

Patricia Barbizet

Lucy Peng—co-founder of Alibaba and a former economics professor—stepped down from her role as Alibaba’s Chief People Officer this past April. She’s now fully dedicated to Ant Financial, where she is in her third year as CEO. With an estimated $3.9 billion in revenue, the Internet finance company—which operates the online payment powerhouse Alipay—is shaping up to be a formidable opponent to Paypal, its American counterpart. As of June 2015, Ant Financial counted over 400 million active users—nearly quadruple those of Paypal. The company also raised $4.5 billion in a recent round of funding this past April that valued the company at $60 billion. Next up: a highly-anticipated IPO to take place by early 2017.

Lucy Peng

In charge of one of Hong Kong’s largest listed companies—with a market cap of $33 billion—Lee had a great 2015. Profits were up 82%, to $3.5 billion, on the sale of the bank’s stake in Shanghai-listed Industrial Bank. But Lee, a nearly 40-year bank veteran, is bracing for a challenging year ahead with a cooling economy, a weak local property market, and low interest rates. She is lowering risk and hoping to grind out income from cross-border investments and insurance initiatives. In June, Lee secured approval from Chinese regulators to take a 70% stake in the mainland’s first onshore foreign-majority owned asset management fund in Qianha.

Rose Lee Wai Mun

After 2015 revenue fell 11.4% (4.9% in local currency) to $15.8 billion and profits dipped by a third at Europe’s largest home-improvement retailer, Laury, in her second year as CEO, announced a five-year turnaround plan in early 2016. Its goal: to increase annual profits by about $655 million. As part of that strategy, Kingfisher is shuttering 65 of its 365 B&amp;Q DIY stores as it expands its Screwfix chain, which sells home improvement goods and saw sales increase 17.5% in U.S. dollars last year.

Véronique Laury

Hired in 2009 to run India’s third largest private sector bank by assets, Sharma has grown Axis from an underrepresented bank to the nation’s fastest growing private sector lender, with revenue up 15% to $7.9 billion in 2015 and nearly 3000 branches across 1,800 cities and towns. First quarter profit this year was hurt by a spike in bad loans, but Sharma deserves accolades for publicizing a “watch list” she created to monitor 4% of the bank’s potentially-troubled assets. In May, she issued a $500 million green bond at the London Stock Exchange—Asia’s first such certified bond in support of green energy and environmentally friendly projects. It was oversubscribed twice.

Shikha Sharma

Ramos oversaw the formation of Barclays Africa Group (BAGL) in 2013, bringing together 12 banks across the continent—most of them operations of Barclays—into a single pan-African institution with an independent board and separate listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Barclays owned a 62% stake in that entity until earlier this year, when the British bank announced its intention to back away from its Africa business. It was a decision that had less to do with the performance of BAGL—despite South Africa’s dismal economy, it grew revenues and profits by 10% and 8% in local currency in 2015 (in dollars, a 6 and 7% decline)— than the diminished ambitions of the London-based financial institution. That leaves Ramos managing the complicated divorce. An economist who served in the government of Nelson Mandela, Ramos is also the architect behind South Africa’s budgeting process and several public finance laws.

Maria Ramos

Among the small pool of women running private equity firms, Senequier is a rock star. Defying naysayers, she spun out her firm from French insurer AXA in 2013 and has raised $20 billion in the past 16 months. Its $55 billion-in-assets under management, up 10% from last year, make Ardian the largest private equity firm run by a woman and one of the top ten biggest PE firms in the world. In April Senequier closed a $14 billion fund—the largest secondary fund ever raised, locking in 180 investors from 26 countries in record time. A concert pianist, Senequier also serves as vice-president of the Hermès supervisory board.

Dominique Senequier

The budget airline chief is now facing one of her toughest challenges, as Britain’s coming exit from the EU threatens easyJet’s meteoric pan-European growth. Despite rumors of her own exit (it was widely reported that Marks &amp; Spencer offered her the top job), McCall is lobbying regulators to ensure that the UK remains in the single European aviation market, a key to the survival of low-cost airlines. The company marked its 20th anniversary last year with net profit up 22%, to $847 million, but has lost 35% of its market value since January because of strikes, terrorist disruptions, and the post-Brexit market shock. On the plus side: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II appointed McCall a Dame.

Carolyn McCall

It’s been a fast rise for Timuray. In July, Vodafone Chief Executive Vittorio Colao named her Chief Commercial Operations and Strategy Officer of the $62 billion-in-revenue group, less than seven years after hiring her from the Danone Group. She began as CEO of Turkey and then was promoted to lead Vodafone’s vast Africa, Middle East, Asia and Pacific (AMAP) business. The new and highly visible position at the world’s second-largest mobile operator makes Timuray one of the most prominent Turkish executives at a Global Fortune 500 company. AMAP is the fastest-growing market in Vodafone's portfolio, and the board is banking on her to mirror that success on a global scale when she assumes her new role in October.

Serpil Timuray

Olayan’s position atop a multibillion dollar conglomerate—estimated revenues are more than $7 billion—makes her a rarity in Saudi Arabia, a country where women are not allowed to drive and were only recently given the right to vote. She has run her family’s sprawling business, which now includes an investment group and dozens of companies that operate across the Gulf Region, since 1986. Many are joint ventures with Western firms like Kimberly-Clark and Cummins; others are homegrown entities like Arabian Healthcare Supply. Olayan, who also serves on the boards of Schlumberger and Saudi Hollandi Bank, has also played a pioneering role in hiring and promoting women within Saudi Arabia’s private sector.

Lubna Olayan

In a year where half of the companies on our list have lost market value, the 175-year-old Dutch publishing house headed by McKinstry has a better story to tell; market cap at the company is up 30%, to $13 billion dollars. In her 13-year tenure, McKinstry, the longest-serving CEO in the Netherlands, has transformed the group from a prosaic operation to a digital powerhouse, divesting non-core assets and investing nearly $1 billion in digital and software acquisitions over the past decade. She has also rolled out smart new products like Cheetah, an online tool for legal professionals. In the first half of 2016, 86% of the group’s revenue came from digital services and solutions.

Nancy McKinstry

Wu—chairwoman and co-founder of Chinese real estate developer Longfor—has felt the pressure of the slowing Chinese real estate market. In 2015, Longfor’s revenues dropped 9%, to $7.5 billion. But in the midst of a sluggish market, the reclusive property magnate—a former journalist and editor for the China City Sightseeing Newspaper—has been hunting for growth by spotting undervalued properties. In 2015, she purchased 25 new parcels of land, scooping up property not only in first-tier cities but also second-tier cities like Suzhou and Nanjing. While the reclusive chairwoman has been vague about this year’s plans for expansion, she has said commercial investments are key to Longfor’s future.

Wu Yajun

As the Royal Mail’s letter volume continues to decline—it contributed to a 30% drop in profits in U.S. dollars last year—Greene is focused on growing the company’s parcel business. In June, she beefed up its European side of that business, which accounted for 17% of the company’s total revenue last year—with the $80 million purchase of Spain’s second biggest express parcels network, ASM Transporte Urgente. Greene is also trying to tap other revenue streams by investing in digital businesses such as Intersoft, which provides delivery management software for international shipments.

Moya Greene

The first woman to lead a Korean bank, Kwon, at the helm of the state-owned entity since 2013, is taking on the challenge of a slowing economy head-on. She is shifting the $8 billion-in-revenue bank’s focus from financing sluggish industries like shipbuilding to future growth sectors like intelligent robots, wearable gadgets, and smart home technology. Kwon is also stepping up efforts to address South Korea’s crippling youth unemployment, holding job fairs as part of IBK’s goal of helping 100,000 people find employment by 2017. The bank lifer, who has grown the business beyond Korea into the global financial hubs of New York, London, and Tokyo and posted profits up 11% last year, to over $1 billion, received the nation’s Bronze Tower of the Order of Industrial Service Merit award for her contribution to the development of industry and the national economy. Though her term is up at the end of this year, her performance makes her a strong candidate for an extension.

Kwon Seon-joo

Isabelle Ealet’s career trajectory at Goldman Sachs continues to rocket ahead. Since becoming managing director in 1997, she has racked up titles: Head of the firm’s commodities division in 2007, executive committee member in 2008, and, in 2012, co-head of the company’s global securities division. This year she also joined the Goldman Sachs International board as an executive director, further cementing her reputation as one of the most senior women at the firm and one of the most high-profile women in global finance.

Isabelle Ealet

Now in her third year on the job, Leroy continues to prune expenses at the Belgian telecom, which saw profits slide 38% in dollars (26% in local currency) in 2015. Her goal: cutting $110 million by 2018. The company also introduced an early retirement plan in 2016 that will pare nearly 2,000 of its 14,000 employees over the next five years. Proximus attracted new customers to its TV subscription and fixed internet services, which grew by 10.5% and 6.6% respectively, but its voice customer base declined by 1.8%. It also expects new EU rules that reduce roaming charges in the single market to deal a $31 million hit to revenue this year.

Dominique Leroy

Christianson, one of Asia’s most influential dealmakers, has reaped an IPO windfall for the bank, underwriting 127 Chinese firms’ IPOs since she became CEO in 2005 (including 13 IPOs last year alone). This makes  Morgan Stanley the No. 1 bank in equity offerings in the Asia-Pacific region (excluding Japan) so far this year. One highlight in May: the $1.1 billion Hong Kong IPO of BOC Aviation, the largest ever IPO of a leasing company globally.  The U.S. educated lawyer-turned-banker, who started her Morgan Stanley career as a Beijing representative in 1998, has also crushed it in China’s booming M&amp;A market, negotiating 44 deals worth $110 billion in 2015. The member of the bank’s global management committee is also advocating for diversity in the workplace and championing for women’s rights across the globe.

Wei Sun Christianson

Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, posted revenue gains of 28% last year. Maggie Wei Wu, now in her third year as Alibaba’s CFO, has voiced confidence that next year’s growth will be even higher. But the pressure is on Wu, a former KPMG audit partner of 15 years: last May the SEC launched an investigation into Alibaba’s accounting practices. One target of suspicion was Alibaba’s official sales estimates for Singles' Day—an Anti-Valentine’s, one-day sales extravaganza—that allegedly raked in $14.3 billion in 2015. The company’s overall stock performance since its 2014 IPO hasn’t proven much cheerier: in its first year trading on the NYSE, Alibaba’s shares fell 28%. While Alibaba has boosted growth with new investments in food delivery services and film studios, it will be a while before the company reaches its goal of reaping over half its revenues from outside China.

Maggie Wei Wu

Walmsley runs GSK’s $10 billion consumer healthcare unit, a portfolio of popular OTC brands including Horlicks, Sensodyne and Flonase that now accounts for 26% of the drugmaker’s 2015 sales. The division, formed in 2014 as a joint venture between Novartis and GSK, operates in 160 countries. In 2015, Walmsley continued to lead the integration of the business while getting good results: global sales for the group increased 44%; profits jumped 76%.

Emma Walmsley

Li, a GM alum who joined China’s internet search giant in 2008, is sometimes compared to Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg. The Chief Financial Officer, who has also pitched in with M&amp;A, marketing and HR roles, encourages women to be ambitious in their careers. As Baidu’s No. 2, she has helped guide the company to tremendous growth; in 2015, a tough year for most Chinese companies, revenues increased 32% and profits by 150%, to $10.6 billion and $5.4 billion, respectively. 2016 has posed greater challenges: Baidu recently reported a dramatic decline in quarterly profits after a government probe prompted stricter regulation of its medical and health advertising. Li also serves on the board of Philip Morris International.

Jennifer Li

In charge of GE’s largest market outside the US, Duan, 46, oversees over $7 billion in revenue, 23,000 employees, and businesses spanning healthcare, power, aviation, transportation, renewables, and GE digital. China’s cooling economy and the government’s massive anti-corruption drive hit GE’s sales last year, but Duan, promoted to the job in 2014, has her eye on the long term. She has made digital revenue a key priority, setting up a technology park in Beijing along with a digital foundry in Shanghai to fast-track GE’s industrial internet initiative. The GE lifer has struck key partnerships with the likes of Huawei and China Telecom while also positioning her business as a strategic partner to Chinese firms hoping to go global. Her goal: $10 billion in revenue by 2020.

Rachel Duan

Liu, the daughter of Lenovo's founder Liu Chuanzhi, clocked twelve years at Goldman Sachs before joining Didi Dache in 2014 as chief operating officer. Last year, Liu was named President of Didi Chuxing—the new company that resulted from Didi’s merger with its chief competitor, Kuaidi Dache, in early 2015. Under Liu’s direction, the ridesharing giant has upped its workforce from 700 to 5,000, raised $3 billion in funding, and formed global rideshare partnerships with Lyft, GrabTaxi, and Ola—all in just the last year-and-a-half. Most impressive of all, Liu helped lead Didi to victory over Uber. In August, Uber agreed to merge with Didi, making the company worth an estimated $35 billion.

Jean Liu

She was only 32 in 2012, when Tsai took charge from her father, the founder of Pou Chen, now the biggest branded footwear maker in the world, with $8.5 billion in revenues. The Wharton graduate took on a sweeping overhaul of the business, steering it through a downturn and returning it to profitability last year. The scale of the business is staggering; the group employs over 400,000 workers producing about 300 million shoes annually for high profile customers like Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Puma, Under Armour, and New Balance, in factories around the world. Vietnam, Worth noting: the Puma shoes that helped propel Usain Bolt across the finish line in Rio this year were made entirely at one of Tsai’s factories. Tasi also helped resolve a workers strike in Vietnam last year, solidifying her clout.

Tsai (Patty) Pei-Chun

Sun, Huawei’s chairwoman for seventeen years, worked as a state radio factory technician and engineer before joining Huawei in 1989. Under her leadership, Huawei has become the third-largest smartphone maker in the world, trailing only Samsung and Apple. The Shenzhen-based company posted $62.9 billion in revenues last year, nearly 60% of which came from sales in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. As carriers around the world are installing faster fourth-generation wireless networks—mostly for watching high-quality videos—Huawei’s networking equipment business is booming.

Sun Yafang

As head of retail banking at Lloyds Banking Group, Brittain was considered one of the most powerful women in British banking and was even seen as a potential CEO successor there. But in December 2015, she took over as CEO of Whitbread, the owner of Costa Coffee shops and budget hotel brand Premier Inn. Whitbread reported $4.4 billion in revenue last year, an increase of 4%. Now Brittain is under pressure to revive the success of the conglomerate’s crown jewel Costa, where same-store sales increased 3% (in local currency) last year, down from 6% the year prior. She says she will boost Costa sales some 50% by 2020, which she plans to do, in part, by adding more than 300 stores in China.

Alison Brittain

This year, Mann, a newcomer to the list, became the first-ever woman to hold a seat on the Management Board at Bayer, the 150-year-old German pharmaceutical company. The Basel-based executive also heads the drugmaker’s Consumer Health division, an estimated $6.7 billion business that she has led—and grown—since 2011, with such brands as Alka-Seltzer, Aspirin, Claritin and Coppertone. She’s also overseen the acquisitions of Dihon Pharmaceuticals of China, Steigerwald of Germany and in 2014, Merck’s Consumer Care unit. Mann also recently completed a three-year term atop the World Self-Medication Industry, a trade association of OTC drugs and dietary supplements.

Erica Mann

As chairperson of the holding company she took over following her husband’s death in 2009, Louis-Dreyfus oversees a commodities house called Louis Dreyfus Co., the world’s largest cotton and rice trader and the second-largest sugar trader. The Louis-Dreyfus family holds a majority stake in the company through a trust her late husband set up in Amsterdam. Amid a global crop glut, the trading house turned in dismal results in 2015, with sales tumbling 14% to $55.7 billion and profit plummeting 67%, to $221 million.

Margarita Louis-Dreyfus

The Samsung heiress has swiftly and aggressively expanded her $2.8 billion hotel and duty-free empire. In the former, her company has added seven business hotels—branded Shilla Stay—since January 2015. In the latter, she partnered with Hyundai Development Company to develop a pair of high-profile malls in Seoul, struck deals to open new outlets in Singapore, Thailand and Japan, and acquired a 44% stake in Miami-based DFASS, the leading in-flight duty-free retailer. But it hasn’t been a smooth ride: the emergence of the infectious disease MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) in Korea was a drag on tourism last year, and this year Chinese visitors are spending less. There is also some regulatory uncertainty around South Korea’s competitive duty-free industry that has weighed down the stock; Shilla has lost 43% of its market value over the past year. Lee is also a nonexecutive director for CITIC Group, China’s biggest brokerage firm.

Boo-Jin Lee

The tight regulation of Israel’s banks is credited with helping institutions largely weather the 2008 financial crisis, and not that much has changed, some eight years later. In late 2015, the country’s bank supervisor called for banks to slim down and reduce costs to consumers. Russak-Aminoach, whose bank posted a 73% increase in profits to $730 million, responded by announcing the early retirement of 700 of its more than 12,000 employees. The bank will also shutter some branches and launch a fully-mobile bank called Pepper later this year. Russak-Aminoach must also contend with a new Israeli law that effectively caps bankers’ salaries, including her own, which at about $2.1 million was the highest among CEOs of the country’s top four banks last year.

Rakefet Russak-Aminoach

As Mastercard’s top ranking executive outside its Purchase, N.Y. headquarters, Cairns, a one-time offshore oil rig engineer, manages 1,900 people and is responsible for the company’s non-North America operations—a growing part of MasterCard’s overall business. In 2015, the company’s international markets generated 65% of its $9.66 billion in revenue, up from 61% the prior year. In July, MasterCard deepened its presence in Cairns’ native U.K. by buying a 92.4% stake in VocaLink Holdings, a payment processor that handles 90% of the country’s salaries and more than 70% of its household bills.

Ann Cairns

Before Richards took over as the first female CEO of M&amp;G in June, she served as global chief investment officer and head of EMEA region at Aberdeen Asset Management. During her 13 years there, its market cap rose from about $167 million to $3.2 billion, prompting comparisons between her departure and Bill Gross leaving Pimco. Her new job will be a turnaround task: M&amp;G, one of the U.K.’s largest investment firms and owned by Prudential plc, saw its assets under management drop 12% (7% in local currency) to $362.7 billion in 2015. Things didn’t get any easier with the Brexit vote in Richards’ first month on the job. M&amp;G now plans to build a fund business in Dublin in case its London base turns off investors.

Anne Richards

Battling severe industry pressures, Southern spent most of last year restructuring the Alberta-based utility, energy, and logistics business her father and grandfather founded in 1947. As profit nose-dived in 2015—hit by oil prices stuck below $50 a barrel and mounting regulatory hurdles, Southern, who took charge in 2003, has turned to renewable energy ventures. She is expanding the $3.2 billion-in-revenue power and pipeline operator’s footprint across the US, Australia, and South America. One new project: a co-generation power plant for cleaner and more affordable fuel in Mexico. Last September Southern joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel as part of Germany’s G7 Presidency dialogue on women’s economic empowerment.

Nancy Southern

Coca-Cola’s Australian producer and distributor faces the same challenges as its major shareholder, The Coca-Cola Company, in the U.S., as consumer taste shifts away from sugary soft drinks. But Watkins, who took over as CEO in 2014, led the company to a 20.5% (44.6% in local currency) increase in profits, to $295 million last year. She’s in the midst of a plan to cut about $75 million in costs and is revamping CCA’s soda products and boosting its other beverages. The company is also reducing the sugar content in its mid-calorie Coke Life beverage, which it plans to relaunch next year. It’s also introduced a new low-calorie iced tea called Fuze, and struck a deal in April 2016 to distribute Monster Energy in Australia and New Zealand.

Alison Watkins

At age 16, Zhou—who grew up on a farm in central China—dropped out of school to work on a factory line in Shenzhen, making watch lenses. At 22, she struck out on her own to found Lens Technology—now a touch-screen glass supplier to Samsung and Apple. She was named China’s wealthiest woman in 2014. But now the fairytale magic seems to be wearing off. In the first quarter of fiscal 2016, Lens’ sales dropped 36%, to $410 million—accompanied by a stunning 59% drop in profits. It’s no coincidence that Lens’ rapid decline mirrored Apple’s 13% year-on-year quarterly sales drop, since it made up almost half of Lens' revenue in 2015. Zhou has since come under fire from angry shareholders urging her to diversify. This year, the company hopes to cut costs by automating part of its manufacturing system and laying off up to half of its 60,000 employees.

Zhou Qunfei

It’s been a rocky year for Berlusconi, the eldest daughter of Italy’s ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. She is struggling  to consolidate the family’s media and entertainment empire while facing increased competition from the industry’s digital disruptors. A deal she struck with French media conglomerate Vivendi to buy out one of her pay TV units earlier this year went sour when Vivendi pulled out in July. Berlusconi accused the French company of “cannibalistic capitalism” and lost little time suing for $645 million in damages. Now she is concentrating on reducing debt at the $5 billion-in-revenue group, starting with the announced sale of AC Milan, the burdensome football club her father bought in 1986, to Chinese investors for $825 million.

Marina Berlusconi

Hasenfratz started as a machine operator at her father’s auto-parts factory in 1990 and metamorphosed it into a diversified manufacturing firm, with 57 plants in 17 countries and 23,000 employees. Revenue has nearly tripled to $3.7 billion since her father, a Hungarian immigrant, put her in charge in 2002, Customers include heavyweights like General Motors, Chrysler, and Volkswagen. Hasenfratz recently acquired European auto-parts maker Montupet SA for $882 million, the biggest acquisition in the group’s 50-year history, and is the highest paid female CEO among Canada’s 100 largest companies. She also became the first woman this year to chair the Business Council of Canada.

Linda Hasenfratz

This year's International Most Powerful Women list spans 19 countries and is comprised of 16% new names.