London, 25 September 2009

Five Indian-origin women are listed in the UK Financial Times (FT) newspaper's list of 'Top 50 Women in World Business', with Indra Nooyi, CEO of US company PepsiCo ranked in first place. Also listed are: Vinita Bali of India's Britannia Industries in 22nd place, Ruby MacGregor-Smith, CEO of UK-based Mitie Group in 32nd place, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw of Indian biotechnology company, Biocon, in 47th place and Shobana Bhartia of India's HT Media group in 48th place. Just missing out on inclusion in the 2009 list were Chanda Kocchar of India's ICICI bank who has held her tenure at CEO for less than 12 months and Preetha Reddy, of Apollo Hospitals in India who was deemed a 'Lieutenant' i.e. below CEO level, although Preetha is the CEO-designate of this family-owned company.

The list was judged by panellists including Dame Marjorie Scardino, CEO of FT-owner The Pearson Group; Dame Clara Furse, formerly CEO of the London Stock Exchange, Rachel Kyte of the International Finance Corporation, Damien O'Brien, CEO of recruitment group Egon Zehnder, Sari Baldauf, formerly Executive VP of Nokai and Jacob Wallenberg of the Investor Group. The judges used a range of tools to make their final decision "Biographical information obviously played a part. So did data on the size of the company (turnover and number of employees), its scope and complexity (did it, for instance, operate in multiple countries or sectors?) and the competitive landscape. Women running companies with a multinational reach were likely to rank more highly than those in charge of nationally focused groups."

"Tenure was obviously important - the FT ranking demanded that CEOs should have served at least 12 months in the role. Finally, we used total shareholder return to gauge corporate performance. This measure varies according to the country, sector and characteristics of the company. It also cannot, by definition, be applied to privately held or government-owned companies. But that is where the experience and judgment of our panel came into play" said Andrew Hill, FT associate editor.

Women to watch

Among those Indian "women to watch" were Padmasree Warrior, Cisco chief technology officer since 2007; Neelam Dhawan, Managing Director of Hewlett-Packard India, Manisha Griortra, UBS India Chief Executive and Naina Lal Kidwal, India group GM for HSBC.

Click to view the FT 'Top 50 Women in World Business' list.