Most Powerful Women International

most powerful women international

This is the 18th year Fortune has ranked the Most Powerful Women in business outside the U.S. GlaxoSmithKline CEO Emma Walmsley takes the top spot this year, ending the four-year reign of Banco Santander Executive Chair Ana Botin. The 50 global businesswomen here represent 19 countries and a variety of industries.

By Erika Fry, Carson Kessler, Ellen McGirt, McKenna Moore, Polina Marinova, and Claire Zillman. 

<a href="http://fortune.com/2017/09/25/most-powerful-women-in-business-international/">Click here</a> for our methodology.
<a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://fortune.com/most-powerful-women/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Click here to see the U.S. Most Powerful Women list.</a>

Walmsley has held the top job at GSK, the $38.9 billion British pharma firm, for 17 months, and she has been quick in bringing change to the 300-year old company. In March, she purchased Novartis’s 36% stake in GSK Consumer Health, the joint venture the two firms formed in 2014 and which, as one of the world’s largest OTC businesses, did $9.4 billion in sales last year. In July, she did a $300 million deal with 23andMe, the data-rich direct-to-consumer genetic testing company, to collaborate on drug development. She’s hired a high profile roster of talent from across the industry and beyond—poaching executives from AstraZeneca, Novartis, Pfizer, Walmart and HSBC among others—and putting them to work on her No. 1 agenda item: reinvigorating drug development at the company. 
 
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<a href="http://fortune.com/longform/gsk-glaxosmithkline-ceo-emma-walmsley">Read: CEO Emma Walmsley's Bold Prescription for Reviving GlaxoSmithKline</a>

Emma Walmsley

Botín helms the Eurozone’s largest bank by market capitalization, and Banco Santander performed solidly in 2017 with revenues and profits climbing 5.6% and 8.8% respectively. Those results were helped along by the Spanish bank's global presence—results in Brazil, Mexico and Spain were especially strong—and a laser focus on cultivating loyal customers (up 24% by the bank’s count). Even so, investors have fretted about the bank’s struggling U.K. business and its lower-than-ideal capital ratios, sending the stock down 29% in the 12 months ending Aug. 30. Botín meanwhile is pushing the bank into blockchain and other technologies and is speaking up more on digital platforms herself these days: she’s become a regular on Twitter, and she explained why she’s a feminist on LinkedIn earlier this year.

Ana Botín

When Kocher took over as CEO of French energy giant Engie in May 2016, she launched a three-year strategic plan to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and boost the share of renewable energy in its portfolio. She shaved a year off of that timeline, completing in June 2018 the company’s portfolio rotation program with roughly $20 billion in announced divestments, including the $1.8 billion sale in July 2018 of its upstream liquefied natural gas business to French oil and gas company Total. At the same time, Engie has invested in more renewable energy sources. In January 2018, for instance, it bought a majority stake in Electro Power Systems, which sells systems for storing hydrogen-based power. In early 2018, the board of Engie decided to keep separate the CEO and chairman roles, dealing a setback to Kocher who had reportedly sought to combine them.

Isabelle Kocher

Dong’s path to the C-suite has been a winding one. Following her husband’s death, Dong found herself as a 30-year-old single mother raising a two-year-old son. In 1990, she became an air conditioner saleswoman at Gree Electric Appliances. “I didn’t want other people’s sympathy,” Dong has said. “I just wanted to live a better life by relying on my own efforts.” In her unlikely tenure as chairperson and president, Dong has turned Gree into a $22.2 billion company, but the air conditioning giant had a tough run in 2017, as Chinese home-appliance stocks have tumbled due to a slowing property market.

Dong Mingzhu

Macquarie appointed Wikramanayake as CEO in July 2018, making her the first woman to head the company and one of Australia’s highest paid women and financial executives. She will assume the post in November 2018. Since joining Macquarie in 1987, Wikramanayake has climbed up its rungs, from roles in corporate services to heading its prudential function, a job that saw her review all transactions in which the investment bank took a principal position. She also established infrastructure funds in North America, led the asset management branch, and became chair of the group foundation focusing on philanthropy. From her new, high-profile platform as CEO of the world’s largest infrastructure asset manager, she says she wants to bring more women into finance and convince girls that it is a compelling career.

Shemara Wikramanayake

Chua Sock Koong has been at the helm of Singtel, Southeast Asia’s largest telecom provider, since 2007. Today, Chua is one of Asia’s most powerful businesswomen, but she used to get mistaken for the secretary. “You learn to laugh these things off,” she says. In the last five years, Singtel has undergone a significant digital transformation by beefing up its infocommunications and new digital business units. With nearly $13 billion in revenue and more than 25,000 employees, the company says it delivered a record net profit of S$5.45 billion ($4 billion) in fiscal year 2018, a 42% increase from the previous fiscal year.

Chua Sock Koong

Cooper pleased investors in May when Imperial Brands announced it would sell off $2.6 billion of non-core businesses as the company focuses on what it calls “next generation products.” That latter category includes Imperial’s e-vapor brand Blu, which will be in at least ten markets by the end of the year, and its heated—versus burned—tobacco products that have been tested in Japan and Europe. In June 2018, Imperial announced an investment in a U.K. biotech company called Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies that researches and develops medical marijuana products.

Alison Cooper

The longtime Executive Director and CEO of Singapore’s state investment firm Temasek oversees a juggernaut of global finance. Temasek’s portfolio, whose value stood at $197 billion at the end of 2017, recorded a Total Shareholder Return of 12% last year. The firm divested more than it invested in 2017—the first time since 2009—and continued to steer money towards cutting-edge tech companies like Verily Life Sciences (a Google spin off) and Amazon. Temasek has also taken big stakes in companies led by other women on this list including Singtel and Ctrip. Ho, an engineer by training, is also the wife of Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and she tends to keeps a low profile, aside from appearances at state dinners and sporadic bursts of activity on her Facebook page.

Ho Ching

Martello runs the fastest growing division of the world’s largest food company Nestlé. And that division, which spans Asia, Oceania and Sub-Saharan Africa—with 100,000 employees in 93 countries—has performed solidly, recording 4.7% organic growth (more than double Nestlé’s rate) in 2017. (Stats are similar for the first half of 2018). Martello joined the Swiss milk and candy giant from Walmart in 2011 to become its CFO and took on her current role in 2015. She currently oversees $22 billion in revenue and has increasingly assumed a wide range of responsibilities: This year she joined the board of Nestlé’s Blue Bottle Coffee, and she’s working to build out the company’s partnership with Starbucks. Martello also has board seats on two of the world’s most buzzed-about companies—Alibaba and Uber—and is reported to be a possible contender for the top job at consumer good rival Unilever when current CEO Paul Polman retires. 
 
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Wan Ling Martello

In 2017, Mahe became the first-ever vice managing director of Apple’s Greater China region—China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao—and the 12,000 employees in those markets. In her first year in the role, she oversaw the region’s double-digit revenue growth as of the third quarter of 2018. Under her leadership, Apple has also rolled out products specific to the region, such as Apple Pay Transit in Beijing, Shanghai, and Dongguan.

Isabel Ge Mahe

Tans is the chief executive at Booking.com, the travel site that generates approximately $7.5 billion in annual revenue and employs 17,000 people in 198 offices in 70 countries worldwide. Under Tans, who was an early employee of Booking.com and became CEO in 2016, the site hit 5 million non-hotel listings in April, an increase of 27% in the last year. Tans told Fortune in June that the company is working to integrate machine learning into its processes. She believes AI has “enormous potential in travel.”

Gillian Tans

As vice chairman and general manager of China’s largest SUV maker—the $14.4 billion company sold nearly 1 million cars last year—Wang is navigating rough terrain. Sluggish consumer spending is testing all of China’s auto industry—Great Wall Motor’s sales inched up just 1% in 2017 and they’ve fallen in 2018—as has the escalating U.S.-China trade war. (GWM has said it may have to adjust its plans to enter the American market by 2021.) Meanwhile, in an effort to match the Chinese government’s ambitious targets, GWM is aggressively pushing into cleaner, greener cars. The company formed a joint venture with BMW to produce electric vehicles in June. Still, GWM’s stock has fallen 44% in the past 12 months. 
 
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Wang Fengying

Peng, one of Alibaba Group’s 18 co-founders, can’t seem to fully cut ties with the company. She held a series of high-profile positions at the Chinese online retailer before leaving in 2014 to take the helm of Ant Financial, the online finance arm of Alibaba. She stepped away from her duties at Ant in March 2018 to join Lazada, another Alibaba-owned startup, as its CEO and executive chairwoman. As Alibaba announced Peng’s appointment, it injected another $2 billion into the Southeast Asia-focused e-commerce company. In her new role, Peng will “focus on driving Lazada’s business growth as a key part of the global strategy of Alibaba Group.”

Lucy Peng

It’s been a busy year for the long-time CEO. This past July, Barclays Africa became Absa Group, one of the final stages of a lengthy spin-off from Barclays PLC, which had been beset by regulatory issues in the region. The Portuguese-South African economist has been a steady hand in the transition, plotting a major rebranding of the $9 billion bank, executing new digital-first strategies and services— including text-based banking— and is promising an aggressively entrepreneurial approach to increase market share across Africa. Her approach is working: Despite a sluggish South African economy, new home loans increased 14% in the first half of 2018.

Maria Ramos

Wu, a journalist-turned-real-estate-developer, founded her business with her husband nearly 25 years ago. Wu, who’s scaled China’s business hierarchy from her working-class roots, now leads Longfor alone after getting divorced in 2012. Higher property sales in 2017 led to net profit and revenue growth of 38% and 32%, respectively. Last year, Longfor expanded into seven new cities and acquired 76 plots of land for development. Longfor is looking to capitalize on the U.S.-China trade skirmish going forward, as President Donald Trump’s tariffs steer Chinese investors back to domestic developers.

Wu Yajun

Wei Wu is the woman behind the finances of China’s Alibaba Group, one of the largest online retailers in the world. Wei Wu is the company’s chief financial officer who helped the company IPO in Hong Kong in 2007 and then co-led its privatization efforts in 2012. In the last year, she oversaw billions in M&amp;A activity, leading investments in long-term growth initiatives such as Alibaba’s new retail strategy, which aims to reinvent the brick-and-mortar experience for shoppers. Fiscal year 2018 was a record year for Alibaba — its revenue grew nearly 60% to $39.9 billion.

Maggie Wei Wu

In December, Richards will take over as chief executive of Fidelity International which operates outside the U.S. and has some $309 billion in assets under management. Richards, a nuclear physicist by training, is going to Fidelity from one of its rivals, fund manager M&amp;G Investments, which she led for two years. During her tenure at M&amp;G, its parent Prudential had merged the investment management business with its European life insurance arm. Richards, one of the better-known figures in Europe’s asset management industry, remained head of M&amp;G and became deputy chief of the combined M&amp;G Prudential last year.

Anne Richards

In her fourth year as CEO, Laury is making some progress on her five-year plan for Kingfisher, Europe’s second-largest home improvement retailer. She wants to boost its digital might, streamline inventory, and integrate back office systems across its Screwfix, B&amp;Q, and Castorama DIY stores. But weakness at Castorama, the French chain Laury herself used to head, has hampered progress, so much so that Laury shook up its leadership in September.

Veronique Laury

In April 2018, Cairns was promoted to vice chair of Mastercard, the financial services company with $12.5 billion in revenue. Cairns, also a member of the global management committee, had spent the previous seven years as president of Mastercard’s international division, a role that put in her charge of 60% of the company’s global revenue. Her new role gives her strategic oversight of global projects at Mastercard, including those involving inclusion, diversity, and innovation.

Ann Cairns

Wat became CEO of China’s largest restaurant company in March. The $7.1 billion company that operates over 8,100 KFCs, Pizza Huts and Taco Bells across China—it also owns two fast-concept Chinese chains—was spun off from U.S.-based Yum! Brands in November 2016. Wat, a former McKinsey consultant who spent a decade in the U.K. with the international health and beauty retailer A.S. Watson, faces toughening conditions; while Yum China posted revenue growth in the first half of 2018, Pizza Hut, which accounts for 20% of the company’s profit, is struggling. Meanwhile, consumer spending is cooling, as is taste for fast American fare in the country. A consortium of private investors recently abandoned a takeover pursuit of Yum China after their initial proposal had been rebuffed, reportedly because of the worsening environment and risks of a trade war. As of August 30, Yum China’s market value has fallen 26% since Wat took charge.

Joey Wat

González made waves as the first woman and youngest-ever leader of a country within the Nissan group. And the group she runs is significant: Nissan is Mexico’s largest automaker, and it enjoyed a roughly 24% market share in the country in 2017. While this year has proven trickier—car sales have been down across the board in Mexico—she has continued the company’s long streak (100+ months) of sales leadership there. In September, she introduced the second generation of Nissan Leaf electric car to Mexico with a splash—it's the first of the automaker's cars that can be purchased entirely on the Nissan Mexico website or Facebook. She’s also taking her role as a diversity leader seriously. On International Women’s Day, she announced a goal to have more than 20% of leadership positions at Nissan Mexico to be held by women by the end of the year. 
 
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Mayra González

Naumova ascended to the top of Magnit in rapid fashion. She was appointed executive director of the Russian food retailer in May, having previously served as general director of Pyaterochka stores, a chain owned by Magnit rival X5. Then when CEO Khachatur Pombukhchan resigned in June, after only several months on the job, the Magnit board named Naumova as his successor. She took over Magnit and its 16,000 stores just as the retailer ceded the title of Russia’s largest retailer to X5 and following the February decision by Magnit founder Sergei Galitsky, who also served as CEO, to sell nearly his entire stake to VTB, a Russian state-run bank.

Olga Naumova

After 15 years at the helm of Wolters Kluwer, an information services provider, McKinstry is now the longest-serving CEO in the Netherlands. That experience showed in 2017, when Wolters posted a 40% uptick in profit and its stock price reached an all-time high. During her lengthy tenure, McKinstry has increased the number of women in senior positions at the company from 20% in 2003 to 50% in 2018, and has successfully led the company’s shift to digital. In 2017, 89% of Wolters’ revenue came from digital products, up from 43% in 2003 when McKinstry took over.

Nancy McKinstry

Uhl took over as CFO of Shell, the $311 billion energy giant, in early 2017. She was a relative unknown at the time, having previously held various finance roles at the Dutch oil major, most recently as executive vice president of finance for the integrated gas unit. In 2018, Uhl oversaw the long-anticipated $25 billion buyback program Shell initiated in July—a move seen as a signal that the world’s second-largest oil company was rebounding from a three-year slowdown in the energy sector. She also directed the company’s $30 billion divestment program that saw it sell its shares of oilsands producer Canadian Natural Resources in May. 
 
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Jessica Uhl

This year hasn’t been the smoothest of rides for Liu, president of China’s ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing. While the six-year-old company, which is larger than Uber and other rivals, continued its meteoric rise, expanding into markets including Brazil, Mexico and Australia, it has also come under fire, Uber-style, for the killings of two separate passengers that used one of its services. While Liu and the leadership apologized for the tragedies and have vowed to improve safety—they plan to better vet drivers and audio record every ride—many in China remain outraged at the company. Didi Chuxing also recorded a more than half-billion dollar loss in the first half of 2018.

Jean Liu

Ardian is the largest private equity firm in the world run by a woman. And that woman? Senequier, who leads its all-male 11-member executive team. Often called “La Reine (the Queen) of Private Equity,” Senequier oversees more than 500 employees across 14 European offices. Under her leadership, Ardian has increased its assets under management from $62 billion to $71 billion in the last year.

Dominique Senequier

As co-COO of the $118.2 billion pharmacy chain Walgreens Boots Alliance, Barra’s responsibilities are considerable. Based in London—though she makes frequent trips to the U.S. where WBA is headquartered—the veteran executive runs global purchasing (WBA is now the world’s largest purchaser of generic drugs) and supply chain as well as central functions like HR. The wholesale business that she manages involves a network of 390 distribution centers and 230,000 pharmacies. She also leads retail pharmacy outside of the U.S. and the U.K., which means she oversees stores—not to mention their online businesses—in 13 countries as well as an investment in the major Chinese drug store chain GuoDa. The multi-faceted role is one fitting for Barra, a trained pharmacist, who began her career in the business decades ago by opening her own pharmacy in her Italian hometown.

Ornella Barra

Growing up on a dairy farm in Ireland gave Bourke an innate sense of what it means to run an enterprise—she’s now in charge of 949 dental clinics, 17 hospitals, 345 medical clinics, 317 nursing homes, and 61 care villages as CEO of British health insurer, Bupa. In 2017, Bourke helped the healthcare provider of 15.5 million insurance customers reach a revenue of nearly $16 billion, a 5% increase from the previous year. This past May, Bupa opened the first phase of a new clinic in Santiago, Chile. With a capacity of 460 beds, it will soon be the largest Bupa hospital in the world. Even earlier in the year, Bupa teamed up with digital health firm HealthTap to lower costs of care and improve patients’ health—all achieved through a digital interface.

Evelyn Bourke

A pioneering woman leader in the Middle East, Olayan has helmed her family’s Saudi Arabia-based conglomerate since 2003. The multi-billion dollar group is wide-ranging, with its 40-some affiliate businesses in industries including finance, real estate, construction, health care, fast moving consumer goods and food service. Last November, OFC tabled plans to hold an Initial Public Offering of some of its assets. The Saudi executive, meanwhile, remains active on the broader global stage as a corporate board member—she’s currently serving at Schlumberger—and earlier this year, she was named by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund's as an advisor to its Future Investment Initiative.

Lubna Olayan

List newcomer Francisco was appointed head of baby and feminine care at Procter &amp; Gamble in August 2018, making her responsible for 19% of all global sales for the consumer goods giant. Francisco, who previously served as vice president of the baby and feminine care divisions, has worked for P&amp;G since 1989 and has recorded a series of firsts with the company. She is, for instance, the first Asian woman to both lead a global business as president and head a business sector as president. She’s also the youngest women ever to be promoted to president at P&amp;G. In her tenure at the company, she’s relied on social media to build brands, such as the award-winning #LikeAGirl campaign she launched for Always feminine products in 2014.

Fama Francisco

Procter &amp; Gamble’s Keith manages a portfolio of iconic brands like Pantene, Herbal Essences, Old Spice, and SK-II that lead the global beauty market with 20% market share in their categories and make up around $12 billion in revenue. Keith has spent her entire 28-year career with the consumer goods behemoth, in more than a dozen roles—from brand manager to marketing director. In 2017, Keith sought to revitalize Procter &amp; Gamble Beauty’s mergers and acquisitions strategy, spearheading the purchase of three indie brands in 2017 and 2018 — Native, Snowberry, and First Aid Beauty.

R. Alexandra Keith

In 2005, Sun joined China-based travel services company Ctrip as its chief financial officer. She then went on to serve as the company’s COO and co-president. In 2016, Sun was appointed as Ctrip’s chief executive, taking the helm of China’s leading online travel site that boasts a market cap of approximately $21.4 billion and saw its revenue reach $3.97 billion in 2017, up 37% from the prior year. Sun also has instituted <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/russellflannery/2017/02/08/passion-and-purpose-ctrip-ceo-jane-sun-talks-about-chinas-travel-boom-ageing-threat/">several programs to benefit female employees</a> such as free taxi rides for pregnant workers and summer camps at its headquarters for staff with young children.

Jane Jie Sun

After working at Swedbank for 30 years, Bonnesen was appointed CEO and president in April 2016. Bonnesen has spearheaded the Nordic-Baltic banking group’s transition to a more digitally-focused platform, with the aim of increasing engagement and efficiency. In Sweden, the bank’s mortgage and consumer loan processes are now fully automated, and 56% of its contract sales are completed digitally in its Baltic markets. Heading a company with over seven million private customers and more than 600,000 corporate customers, Bonnesen has boosted Swedbank’s 2017 revenue to $6.3 billion, an increase of 8.9% since 2016.

Birgitte Bonnesen

A banking veteran, Christianson is one of the most visible women in global finance as well as one of the most outspoken ambassadors for China and its role in the global economy. Under her leadership, Morgan Stanley’s China business has continued to grow; the bank led both the M&amp;A and equity capital markets in the country—in terms of both the number of deals and deal value—in 2017 according to Dealogic. Revenues for the bank in Asia (excluding Japan), a region that Christianson co-leads, were up 9% in the second quarter this year. Christianson, who is a member of Morgan Stanley’s management committee, worked as a lawyer in New York and a regulator in Hong Kong before joining the bank.

Wei Sun Christianson

Gaines became Fortescue Metals’ first-ever female CEO in November 2017—timing that was inauspicious. The iron ore company is reeled from declining demand in China; its profit took a dive of 58% in 2017. In her first few months as CEO, Gaines, who previously served as Fortescue CFO, has overseen the restructuring of the company’s balance sheet in an effort to reduce debt and lower the cost of borrowing. She also secured approval for Fortescue’s largest project since 2013: the development of a $1.4 billion mine in Pilbara, Australia, which will allow the company to maintain service after another mine in the area is depleted. Gaines is also considering Fortescue’s entrance into a new market—South America—a move that could help make up for the slowdown in China.

Elizabeth Gaines

Han has led Korea’s top Internet portal and search company since 2017. Results under her leadership have been solid so far with revenues and profits climbing 19% and 5% respectively last year. That’s not to say the job has been easy; the executive has been tested by a scandal related to “news editing”—users gaming the system to search-optimize their opinions—that happens on Naver’s websites. Han has said the company will adopt a system more like Google’s to prevent such practices.

Han Seong-Sook

McCall made the high-profile leap from CEO of discount airline easyJet to chief executive of the British broadcaster last year, starting her new ITV position in January 2018. In the first half of the year, ITV reported that its share of viewers had reached a 10-year high, thanks to its hit reality show Love Island and coverage of the World Cup. In July, McCall announced a new three-year plan to invest $78.7 million to “refresh” ITV, including the further development of its streaming service ITV Hub, a paid version of which has experienced 500% subscriber growth year over year. A joint streaming service with a rival is also not out of the question since McCall sees a real demand for “distinctive British content.”

Carolyn McCall

Serving as CEO of Starbucks China means Wong, a Hong-Kong native, oversees the $22 billion global coffee chain’s fastest-growing market where a new Starbucks store opens every 15 hours. With 3,300 stores in China to date, she has a goal of opening 5,000 more by 2021, as Starbucks—once unrivaled in China—faces new competition from startups like Luckin Coffee. In addition to spearheading Starbucks’ torrid growth, Wong introduced a pioneering health insurance benefit and housing allowance for employees in June 2017, and in August 2018, her company teamed up with Alibaba to create a virtual Starbucks store for Chinese customers.

Belinda Wong

Duan has been at the helm of GE China since 2014; she’s the first woman to ever hold the role. Although the stock price of GE has plummeted 60% since the beginning of 2017, its China business is a bright spot for the embattled American conglomerate. Under Duan’s leadership, China industrial orders broke $8 billion for the first time in the company’s history in 2018. In the previous year, she has led the consolidation and realignment of GE China Technology Center strategies to better support local market needs for GE verticals in China, and she launched GE’s first Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center outside the U.S. to develop, deploy and promote advanced manufacturing technologies in China.

Rachel Duan

Roughly half of SAP’s $26.4 billion in yearly revenue flows through Fox-Martin, co-leader of global customer operations. In her second year on the executive board, Fox-Martin is also overseeing the company’s shift to the cloud, an effort that is already bearing fruit. In the first quarter of 2018, SAP’s cloud revenue grew by 31%, exceeding 1 billion euros ($1.16 billion) in a quarter for the first time in company history. With the largest cloud portfolio in the world, SAP’s market cap and stock price reached an all-time high in 2018’s first quarter.

Adaire Fox-Martin

Sabancı has served as head of her family’s $11.3 billion conglomerate—one of Turkey’s largest—since 2004, but the firm, which operates in 13 countries and a wide range of industries, faced a tougher year than most due to the collapse of Turkey’s currency. Her firm's market value plummeted 63% in the 12 months ending August 30. (About 43% of Sabancı’s shares are publicly traded.) The economic conditions didn’t preclude its energy subsidiary Enerjisa Enerji—owned jointly by E.ON of Germany—from its successful IPO in February. Güler, one of Turkey’s leading philanthropists, received the Award for Responsible Capitalism in a ceremony held in the U.K. at the House of Lords in May.

Güler Sabancı

The Louis-Dreyfus Company, which Margarita Louis-Dreyfus controls through her position as chairperson of its parent holding company, is one of the few agricultural merchants that controls the worldwide flow of crops and food stuffs. It has been battered of late by bumper harvests that have sunk crop prices and saw its CEO and CFO step down suddenly in September amid the downturn. At the same time, the company has worked to refocus its business, divesting assets like part of its Australia fertilizer company Landmark Operations in April and its global metals business, which it sold to NCCL Natural Resources Investment Fund, in May. At the same time, it’s looked to boost its processing activities. In September, for instance, it opened a new oilseed processing plant in Tianjin, China.

Margarita Louis-Dreyfus

Russak-Aminoach,CEO of one of Israel’s largest bank’s since 2012, is credited with turning around Leumi’s fortunes with dramatic cost cutting measures that have slashed employee headcount and reduced the number of branch locations. As near-zero interest rates have remained in place, Russak-Aminoach also has turned to technology for growth. The centerpiece of that initiative is Pepper, a mobile-only bank launched last year that Russak-Aminoach now wants to expand into Europe and the U.S. Leumi was nationalized in the early 1980s amid the nation’s bank stock crisis, but Israel completed its privatization of the bank in September, as it sold its remaining 5.4% stake to Citigroup.

Rakefet Russak-Aminoach

Yan’s Nine Dragons Paper has revolutionized the Chinese packing board industry since its founding in 1995, growing into the world’s largest recycled-paper manufacturer and earning its CEO a spot among the world’s richest self-made women. (She has an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion.) Nine Dragons has an annual production capacity of over 13 million metric tons with nine manufacturing hubs across China and Vietnam. In June 2018, it expanded into the United States for the first time by acquiring two paper mills in Maine and Wisconsin for a combined $175 million in an effort to diversify its manufacturing base.

Cheung Yan

Yang gets a lot of attention for being China’s richest woman, but she is also vice chairman—and the “Ultimate Controlling Shareholder”—of Country Garden Holdings, China’s largest property developer. Founded by her father, Yang reportedly got involved with the business at an early age and was later designated his successor-in-training. She currently owns a 57% stake in the $33.6 billion real estate firm, which is active in 261 cities and more than 1,000 townships across China. Revenues jumped 45.7% and profits more than doubled in 2017, though some stock watchers worry Country Garden will be hurt by  possible government crackdown on pre-sales, a practice of collecting payment before property construction is finished. Yang also chairs Bright Scholar Education Holdings, which operates international K-12 schools in China.

Yang Huiyan

She broke the crystal ceiling in the largely male-dominated watch industry partly by being there from the start. Her father, Nicolas Hayek Sr., founded the Swatch Group, Ltd. in 1983 through the merger of two Swiss companies. The $8.3 billion dollar company is famous for its colorful Swatch watches, and is home to some of the most prestigious watch and jewelry brands, including Harry Winston, Longines, Omega, and Rado. She became Chair in 2010, and after orchestrating its purchase, CEO of Harry Winston in 2013. In the era of the Apple Watch, Swatch’s business has continued to tick along; after two years of sales declines, revenue was up 5.6% in 2017. Hayek also runs Hayek Engineering, the Zurich-based construction and public works firm.

Nayla Hayek

Vaidyan took over India’s only reinsurer in 2016, and under her management GIC has crept—from No. 14—into the ranks of the global top ten reinsurance firms. Revenues for the $6.8 billion state-run company climbed 44% in 2017, a year in which Vaidyan also oversaw the company’s initial public offering, India’s third-largest ever. She has also pushed GIC, which operates in more than 160 countries, to expand more aggressively overseas. A 30-year veteran of the insurance industry, Vaidyan has a graduate degree in English and received training at the Harvard Business School.

Alice Vaidyan

Hasenfratz began her career in 1990 as a machine operator at her father's car parts factory, Linamar Corporation. In 2002, she succeeded him to become the CEO of the global manufacturing company. During her tenure, Hasenfratz has grown the business from an $800 million enterprise to a behemoth with $5 billion in revenue in 2017, turning Linamar into Canada’s second-biggest car parts company.

Linda Hasenfratz

A newcomer to the list, Soweto native Ntshingila is a passionate advocate for development, and social inclusion in Africa. Since 2015, she’s led the team that aims to persuade major agencies and brands to grow their presence on the platform across the continent. It’s a long game: She’s part of the group of people who are tasked with finding the company’s next billion users, as the social network works to find ways to make a dent in regions where reliable internet and full feature phones aren’t guaranteed. Before joining Facebook, the award-winning marketer was the CEO of Ogilvy &amp; Mather South Africa for seven years - SAB Miller, KFC, Cadbury, BP, Volkswagen and Coca-Cola were among her clients - before becoming Chair in 2012. 
 
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Nunu Ntshingila

Kreis, in her fourth year as CFO of the German postal service, is the only woman on the group’s six-person executive board that oversees half a million employees. In a fiercely competitive courier market, Deutsche Post DHL posted its highest operating revenue of all time in 2017 at $3.7 billion. As CFO, Kreis has been key in leading the investment agenda of the group and the company’s adoption of new accounting standards ahead of competition. This past year, the group streamlined its portfolio and strengthened its focus on logistics, in part, by selling Williams Tea Lag, a provider of marketing and communications supply chain services.

Melanie Kreis

This is the 17th year Fortune has ranked the Most Powerful Women in business outside the U.S. The 50 global businesswomen here represent 17 countries and many industries.