Henri Proglio: EDF CEO

Of Italian origin, Henri Proglio was born on June 29, 1949 in Antibes, France. He graduated from HEC Paris.

There are individuals who possess the character, skill and drive to become leaders and Henri fits in this category. He began working for Compagnie Générale de Eaux in 1972.  Henri reached the top position in the firm in a little less than twenty years becoming Chairman and CEO in 1990. Almost a decade later in 1999 he was named Vice-President of Vivendi Universal and Chairman and CEO of Vivendi Water. Henri became Chairman of Violia Environnement in 2000 and was also appointed CEO three years later.

In November 2009 Henri was named Chairman and CEO OF Electricité de France (EDF). EDF is one of the largest companies in the world. Running it has its challenges. To be efficient and profitable it has to be run like a private company but EDF is basically a state-owned utility company with the French government owning 84 percent of it. It is the French president who appoints the head of EDF from a short list of candidates.

EDF is also the world’s biggest operator of nuclear plants. Henri has performed very well. Although he was appointed by a conservative government, the current government of French President Francois Hollande kept him in place. Henri has had a good working relationship with the socialist government which has allowed EDF to increase its tariffs by 5 percent last year.

During Europe’s energy crisis of recent years, other European utilities suffered while EDF stocks have broadly outperformed the sector. Henri has also cut debt, pulled EDF out of its struggling North American nuclear business and ended legal dispute with water group Veolia over their energy services joint venture Dalkia. With his five year term ending in November 2014 there are even talks that the current government may extend his term.

Outside of EDF Henri is a non-executive director of CNP Assurances, Dassualt Aviation and Natixis. He was decorated Commander of the National Order of Merit of the Legion of Honour. 

Roberto Egydio Setubal: Itaù Unibanco Holding CEO

Roberto Egydio Setubal earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Production Engineering from Escola Politécnica Da Universidade De São Paulo in 1977. He went on to earn a Master’s Degree in Engineering from Stanford University.

Roberto has had a distinguished career in the banking industry. Among various positions he has held at Utaù Unibanco include being general manager from 1990 to 1994. Roberto has served as executive vice president of Itausa since May 1994 and has served as director since April 1995 and president and chief executive officer since April 1994.  He has been vice chairman of the board of directors since March 2003.

Outside of the bank he was the president of the Brazilian Federation of Banks (Federacao Brasileira de Bancos – FEBRABAN) and of the National Federation of Banks (Federacao Nacional de Bancos or FENABAN) from April 1997 to March 2001. Among others Roberto serves on the international advisory committee of the New York Stock Exchange.

Itaù Unibanco Holding is one of the largest companies in the world. Founded in 1944 and based in Brazil it has sales of $67.16 billion with 95,696 employees. 

Dr. Oh-Hyun Kwon: Samsung Electronics CEO

Dr. Oh-Hyun Kwon earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University. He went on to earn an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) and went further to obtain a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.  There is no question about Dr. Kwon’s academic achievements but he has gone beyond theory and parlayed the knowledge he learned and applied them at Samsung Electronics greatly contributing to its success as a global electronics powerhouse.

In 1985 Dr. Kwon joined Samsung Electronics’ Semiconductor Business. In 1992 he successfully led the development of the industry’s first 64Mb DRAM. Dr. Kwon was appointed Vice President of Samsung’s Memory Device Technology unit three year later. Another promotion came in 1998 when he was appointed Senior Vice President and head of System LSI Division’s ASIC business.

In 2000 Dr. Kwon was appointed Executive Vice President and head of LSI Technology. He was promoted to President and General Manager of the System LSI Division in 2004. Dr. Kwon had a high successful stint at the System LSI Division. During his 10 years there the division gained top market shares of display driver ICs, application processors and CMOS image sensors.

With his outstanding performance Dr. Kwon was promoted to President of the Semiconductor Business (now Device Solutions) in May of 2008. This was the time when the memory chip industry was struggling to recover from one of its worst downturns. By the following year he was confident enough to say that the semiconductor business would recover with rising demand and limited supply.

Dr. Kwon was promoted to Vice Chairman of Samsung Electronics in December 2011 and was appointed CEO six months later.

His promotions have come with challenges and this was no exception as it was also the period when Samsung Electronics was involved in a series of disagreements with Apple over supposedly copied designs. His rise and leadership at Samsung Electronics is also associated with the creation of the Samsung Galaxy phones that has established the firm as one of the global leaders in smartphones.

Alexey Miller: Gazprom CEO

Alexey Borisovich Miller was born on January 31, 1962 in Leningrad (now Saint. Petersburg), Russia to a family of German ethnicity.  In 1989 he earned a PhD in Economics from the N.A. Voznesenkii Leningrad Finance and Economics Institute.

After graduating, Alexey began his professional career as an engineer-economist at the general planning division of the Leningrad Civil Construction Research and Design Institute (LenNIIproekt under the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council).

Alexey served with the Committee for External Relations of the Saint Petersburg Mayor’s Office under Vladimir Putin from 1991 to 1996.  He was Director for Development and Investments of the Port of Saint Petersburg from 1996 to 1999. Alexey then served as Director General of the Baltic Pipeline System from 1999 to 2000. He was appointed Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation in 2000.

Alexey became the Chairman of the Management Committee (CEO) of Gazprom in 2001.

Gazprom is Russia’s largest company and the biggest gas producer in the world accounting for around 13 percent of the world’s gas production. 

Robert Dudley: BP CEO

Robert “Bob” Dudley was born on September 14, 1955 in Queens, New York City. Bob grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In 1973 he graduated from Hinsdale Central High School in suburban Chicago. Bob earned a BS in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois. He proceeded to earn a Master of International Management degree from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.

In 1979 Bob joined Amoco. He worked in a number of positions including negotiating deals in the South China Sea. In what would be a defining development in his career Amoco had him work in Moscow from 1994 to 1997. Bob became a general manager for strategy for Amoco in 1997. In 1999 after the merger between BP and Amoco he was appointed to a similar role in BP.

Bob was executive assistant to the group chief executive between 1999 and 2000 after which he became group vice president for BP’s renewable and alternative energy activities. Bob became group vice president in 2002 responsible for BP’s upstream business in Russia, the Caspian region, Angola, Algeria and Egypt.

His exposure to Russia certainly played a big role in his becoming the president and chief executive of TNK-BP from 2003 to 2008. This was a joint venture between BP and a group of Russian billionaires known as AAR. Bob later had a falling out with AAR who accused him of favoring BP.  It reached a point where he had to leave Russia in haste because his visa was not renewed. After much difficulty in trying to run the business from outside Russia he resigned in December 2008.

Bob returned to BP in 2009 and was appointed to the BP board and responsible for the group’s activities in the Americas and Asia. He took on a crucial and sensitive job serving as president and executive officer between June 23 and September 2010 of BP’s Gulf Restoration Organization in the US after the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

This stint was short-lived as Bob took on a bigger role of becoming BP’s Group Chief Executive on October 10, 2010.

Michael Corbat: Citigroup CEO

Michael Corbat was born on May 2, 1960 in Bristol, Connecticut, USA. He earned a B.A. in economics from Harvard University. Michael was also interested in sports and played offensive guard for the school’s football team. He was two time all Ivy League and was selected as first string College Football All-American Team in NCCA Division I-AA in 1982. Michael was good enough to be drafted professionally but passed up the chance to work in Wall Street.

He began working at Solomon Brothers and didn’t leave when it was acquired by Citi.  At the end of the day company ownership did not affect his rise to the top post. Among the roles he assumed was as Head of Citi’s Global Corporate Bank and Global Commercial Bank and CEO of Citi’s Global Wealth Management.

Michael was also CEO of Citi Holdings and was responsible for and led the divestiture of a portfolio of non-core business and assets following the financial crisis of 2008 and Citi’s participation in the Troubled Asset Relief Program. He was named CEO of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in 2011. Michael became CEO of Citi in October 2012.

Citi is one of the largest banks in the world with around 200 million customer accounts and activities in over 160 countries and jurisdictions.

  

Ben van Beurden: Royal Dutch Shell CEO

Ben van Beurden was born on April 23, 1958 in the Netherlands. After graduating with a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands he joined Royal Dutch Shell.

Ben is considered a “lifer” at Shell having stayed with the company throughout his career. This has given Ben the advantage of knowing the company inside out. His career at Shell exposed him to both Upstream and Downstream activities He began working in the Netherlands and at the Port Sudan Refinery in Sudan. He has been based in Africa, Malaysia, the U.S. and the U.K. Ben has held a number of operational and commercial position and a variety of positions in the Downstream.

He was appointed Vice President, Manufacturing and Excellence, based in Houston, Texas in 2005. In this role Ben was responsible for standards and operational excellence and high-performance initiatives in refining and chemicals manufacturing.

In December 2006, Ben became Executive Vice President, Chemicals, based in London, UK. He is credited with turning around Shell’s struggling chemicals division. From a loss making enterprise in 2008, the Chemicals business now contributes 5 percent of net earnings. Ben also worked for 10 years in Shell’s liquefied natural gas business, which has become a crucial driver of the group’s growth.

He was Downstream Director and had responsibility for Europe and Turkey from January to September 2013. Ben has been a member of the Executive Committee since January 2013. He became Chief Executive Officer on January 1, 2014.

His promotion came as a surprise as there were others higher in rank and listed as front runners. His name was not on the list. Ben is not that well known as other Shell executive outside of the company. Top management though chose someone with solid company experience and proven track record.

Royal Dutch Shell is one of the largest companies in the world generating revenue of $451.2 billion in 2013.

Zhou Jiping: PetroChina Company Chairman

Zhou Jiping was born in 1952 and of Han nationality. He earned a degree in Geology from the China University of Petroleum and holds a master’s degree in Marine Geologic Structure from the Nanhai Marine Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  Zhou is a professor-level senior engineer with almost 40 years of working experience in China’s petrochemical industry.  

He was the Manager of the development department of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, Manager of the overseas department of the International Cooperation Bureau of the China National Petroleum Company, President of the China National Oil and Gas Exploration and Development Corporation in Vanuatu, and President of the China National Oil and Gas Exploration and Development Corporation in Papua New Guinea.

Zhou was appointed a Director of PetroChina in May 2004 and the Vice Chairman and President of the Company in May 2008. He was appointed President of CNPC in November 2011. Zhou was formally appointed as the Chairman and President of PetroChina and Chairman of CNPC in April 2013.

PetroChina is the largest oil and gas producer and distributor in China as well as one of the largest companies in the world in terms of revenue. CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) is the sole sponsor and controlling shareholder of PetroChina.

Siqing Chen: Bank of China President

Siqing Chen earned a college degree in 1982 from Hubei Institute of Finance and Economics. A Certified Public Accountant Chen also received an MBA from Murdoch University, Australia in 1999.  He joined the Bank of China in 1990.

During the period June 2000 to May 2008 Chen held various positions in the Bank such as Assistant General Manager, Vice General Manager of the Fujian Branch, General Manager of the Risk Management Department of Head Office and General Manager of the Guangdong Branch.

Prior to that Chen worked in the Hunan branch of the Bank before he was seconded to the Hong Kong Branch of China and South Sea Bank Ltd. as Assistant General Manager.

From June 2008 to January 2014 Chen has served as Executive Vice President of the Bank.  In February 2014 he was promoted to the top management post as President of Bank of China and was appointed Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors in April 2014.

Since December 2011 he has been serving as Non-Executive Director of BOCHK (Holdings) and Chairman of the Board of Directors of BOC Aviation.

Other positions held by Chen include serving as Chairman of the Board of Directors of China Culture Industrial Investment Fund Co., Ltd., Vice Chairman of China Chamber of International Commerce and Director of Trade and Finance Committee of China Banking Association.

The bank that Chen leads has played a significant role in China’s history. It was established in February 1912 following the approval of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. The period 1912 to 1949 saw the Bank serve consecutively as the country’s central bank, international exchange bank and specialized international trade bank. The Bank was made into a wholly state-owned commercial bank in 1994. 

The Bank of China Limited was incorporated in August 2004. The Bank was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Shanghai Stock Exchange in June and July 2006 respectively.  As the most international and diversified bank, Bank of China provides a full range of financial services to customers throughout the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and 37 countries.