Pascal Soriot: AstraZeneca CEO

Pascal Soriot was born in France on May 23,1959. He holds a doctor of veterinary medicine from École Nationale Vétérinaire d’Alfort, Maisons-Alfort. Pascal later earned an MBA from HEC, Paris. 

He started his career in the pharmaceutical industry in 1986, joining Roussel Uclaf. This was previously the second largest pharmaceutical company in France until 1997 when it was purchased by Hoechst AG. Pascal joined the company as a salesman and was stationed in Australia. He was promoted in 1996 to General Manager of Hoechst Marion Roussel in Australia, then in April 1997 moved to Tokyo, Japan. 

Pascal joined Aventis in America in 2000. He was promoted to Chief Operating Officer of Aventis USA in 2002. The company became Sanofi Aventis USA in 2004. Next he moved to Roche in 2006. Pascal became the Chief Executive of Roche subsidiary Genentech from April 2009 to 2010. After which he rejoined Roche Pharma AG as Chief Operating Officer. Pascal held this position until September 2012. 

He was named as the new Chief Executive of AstraZeneca, the world’s fifth largest pharmaceutical company on August 28, 2012. He took up the position on October 1, 2012, he was also elected Director the same year. 

Pascal took over the company when it was in bad shape. Profits fell 31 percent between the second and third quarters of 2012. One of the main reasons for the decline was the expiration of a number of its pharmaceutical patents, including Crestor (a treatment for cholesterol) and Nexium (a heartburn remedy) and there was no new products to replace them. For a number of years AstraZeneca had failed to invest in R&D and this was something that Pascal needed to immediately address. 

He had to take the painful step of lower the workforce by around 2,300 employees who were  mostly in the production lines. He relocated the company’s headquarters to its R&D hub in Cambridge while shutting down another R&D facility. Pascal focused on R&D as well. 

By April 2014, AstraZeneca was healthy enough to refuse a €87 billion takeover bid from Pfizer. 

Victor Dodig: CIBC President & CEO

Victor Dodig holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Toronto. He earned an MBA from Harvard University and was a Baker Scholar. Victor also holds a Diploma from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris, France. 

Among his various professional positions was as management consultant with McKinsey and Company from 1994 to 1997. He also worked at Kraft General Foods Inc. At one point he was the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Merrill Lynch Investment Managers Canada. 

Before Victor joined Canada Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) he was Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer in Canada for UBS Global Asset Management. In 2005 he joined CIBC as Executive Vice-President, CIBC Wealth Management. 

Victor was appointed Executive Vice-President, Retail Distribution in 2007. In this position  he led the bank’s retail banking distribution and sales team. In 2007, Victor was named Group Head, Wealth Management, being responsible for the bank’s brokerage, private wealth, and asset management businesses in Canada and the US.

In September 2014, Victor became head of CIBC, being appointed President and Chief Executive Officer and member of CIBC’s Board of Directors. 

Jay Fishman: The Travelers Companies CEO

Jay Fishman was born on November 4, 1952, in the Bronx, New York. His father owned a small printing company and worked long hours so that Jay could go to private school Barnard School for the Boys. Hard work has been highly valued by the family. Jay’s grandmother who came from Latvia reportedly went to the Lower East Side of Manhattan at age 13 to work as a seamstress and send money back to Latvia so the family could later join her. 

Jay did not disappoint he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania. He later earned a Master’s degree in Accounting from the Wharton School of Business at the same university. He worked as an accountant at American Can Co. Jay moved to the firm’s acquisition unit which led him to a lucrative career direction. 

He later worked for merchant bank Shearson Lehman, then with Primerica. In 1992 Premerica acquired a significant part of Travelers and Jay and fellow by the name of Robert Lipp were sent to the company to troubleshoot. Premerica would later acquire all of Travelers and Jay was tasked to lead the firm in 1998. 

In 2000 the head of CitiGroup (which Travelers was then a part of) named Jay and Chuck Prince as co-chief operating Officers of Citi, with one of them one day expected to head CitiGroup.  Jay later moved out of Citi citing among other factors that there would be others more fit and qualified to run the financial behemoth. He instead became the head of troubled insurance company St. Paul Cos. With his team Jay was able to turnaround the company.  Travelers was spun off from Citi in 2004 and in April 2004 Jay led the acquisition of Travelers in an $18 billion, all stock deal. It wasn’t easy start for the new combined company which involved laying off 10 percent of the workforce equaling to 3,000 jobs. 

Today the insurance company that Jay heads is known as The Travelers Companies, is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and generated around $27 billion in revenues in 2014. 

Kumar Sarraf: ONGC Head

Kumar Sarraf is a B. Commerce (Hons) graduate of Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University and also holds Post Graduation in Commerce from the same university. Kumar joined a well-know private sector group as an Executive Trainee in 1976 and worked there until 1982. He then entered the oil industry in 1983 joining Oil India Limited and then in Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) in 1991. 

Rising through the ranks he served as the Chief of Commercial of ONGC from 2003 to 2004. Kumar was instrumental in several oil and gas acquisitions in OVL. He was also involved in conversion of the erstwhile Oil and Natural Gas Commission to a company including financial restructuring and valuation disinvestment of government shareholding in 1994.  He later became Director of Finance from December 2007 to September 2011. 

Kumar was Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of ONGC Videsh Limited (a subsidiary of Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd) from September 2011 to March 2014. He finally got the top post in March 2014 when he became Chairman of the Board and Managing Director of ONGC.

ONGC is India’s most profitable firm and with government presence one needs government approval before getting the top post. 

Nicandro Durante: BAT CEO

Nicandro Durante has joint Brazilian and Italian nationality. His parents came from the Lazio region near Rome, Italy and moved in the 1950s to Sao Paulo, Brazil during a peak in European migration to South America. Nicandro’s father was connected with the shipping industry then took up a job with Pirelli, the Italian tire company. 

Nicandro graduated in business administration and economics from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He then spent the next three years working in finance in two Brazilian companies then joined British American Tobacco’s(BAT) Brazilian subsidiary Souza Cruz in 1981. Working for Souza Cruz was a big advantage for Nicandro as the firm had operations from tobacco plantations to producing the final product and delivering it to retail outlets. Thus he experienced and fully understood the whole chain of tobacco production, manufacturing and sales. 

His various job positions at BAT enabled him to work in different parts of the world. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1995. Then Nicandro became Finance Director in Hong Kong in 1997. He was back again in Brazil in 2000 as Finance Director and then in 2002 he was appointed President of Souza Cruz. 

Nicandro continued to rise up the corporate ladder with more and more important responsibilities. In 2006 he was appointed BAT’s Director of Africa &  Middle East. In 2008 he was promoted to COO. In September 2010 he was appointed Chief Executive Designate and the following year became CEO. In the process he became the first non-Briton to run BAT. 

While the company is based in the United Kingdom it makes less than 1 percent of its sales in that country. Thus having someone not from that place isn’t a disadvantage at all since BAT does sells it products in 180 countries. 

The avid marathoner, Nicandro runs one of the largest tobacco companies in the world. There is a lot of controversy regarding the tobacco industry, Nicandro himself smokes cigars and believes at the end of the day it’s all a matter of personal choice. 

Jean-Paul Agon: L’Oréal Chairman & CEO

Jean-Paul Agon was born on July 6, 1956, in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. After completing his studies at the HEC International Business School in 1978 he joined L’Oréal and never left. Jean-Paul started his career as a product manager for the Consumer Product division in France. He was appointed General Manager of L’Oréal Greece in 1981 and is credited with laying a solid business foundation of the company there. 

Jean-Paul returned to France in 1985 as General Manger of L’Oréal Paris. In this capacity he supervised a number of important launches and successes such as Studio Line, Plénitude and Elsève. He was appointed International Director for Biotherm in 1989. Jean-Paul remodeled the brand and gave it international appeal. He became Managing Director of L’Oréal Germany in 1994 and played a central role in dealing with problems related to the slowdown in the growth of the European markets at that time. 

After a number of more key assignments Jean-Paul was rewarded with the post of CEO of L’Oréal in 2006. The chairmanship position was added in February 2011. 

Robert Bradway: Amgen CEO

Robert Bradway earned a degree in Biology from Amherst College and later earned an MBA from Harvard University. He joined Morgan Stanley in New York in 1985 as a health care industry investment banker. In 1990 Robert moved to London and served as head of the international health care investment banking activities of Morgan Stanley. He later was responsible for corporate finance management. 

Robert was Managing Director for banking department and corporate finance Europe, for Morgan Stanley in London after which he left the company and joined Amgen in 2006. He came into Amgen as Vice President, Operations Strategy. Robert was then promoted and became Vice President and Chief Financial Officer on April 2007. He served in that capacity until May 2010 when he was appointed President and Chief Operating Officer. 

Robert was appointed to the Amgen Board of Directors in 2011.  He became Chief Executive Officer in May 2012 and Chairman in January 2013. Robert is a member of the Board of Directors of Norfolk Southern Corporation and serves on its Audit and Governance committees. 

The company that Robert leads is one of the largest publicly traded in the world. It was founded in April 8, 1980, by William K. Bowes, Jr., Franklin Pitcher Johnson, Jr., George B. Rathmannn and Joseph Rubinfeld. Amgen is based in Thousand Oaks, California. 

The biotechnology medicines company discovers, develops, manufactures and markets medicines for grievous illnesses. Amgen focuses on human therapeutics and concentrates on innovating novel medicines based on advances in cellular and molecular biology.

The company markets recombinant protein therapeutics in supportive cancer care, nephrology and inflammation. Amgen’s products include Neulasta, a pegylated protein, based on the Filgrastim molecule and NEUPOGEN, a recombinant-methionyl human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor both of which  selectively stimulate the production of neutrophils; Embrel, an inhibitor of tumor necrosis factor, a substance that plays a role in the body’s response to inflammatory diseases; and other products. 

With a background in biology, Robert has a clear understanding of the complex and advanced work his company does and not merely relying on his management and financial knowhow. 

Ulrich Spiesshofer: ABB CEO

Ulrich Spiesshofer was born on March 26, 1964, in Aalen, in the southwestern German state of Baden-Wuerttember. Ulrich holds a Master’s degree in business administration and engineering as well as a PhD in economics from the University of Stuttgart. 

Ulrich joined AT Kearney management consultant in 1991. He rose to become managing director of AT Kearney International, during which time he ran consulting businesses in industries including oil and gas, utilities, telecommunications and automotive, in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Ulrich left AT Kearney in 2002 then joined Roland Berger Strategy Consultants in Switzerland. He spent three years in the company as senior partner and global head of the operations practice. 

In 2005 Ulrich joined ABB as Executive Committee member responsible for strategy and development. He was appointed in 2010 Head of Discrete Automation and Motion, one of the five divisions of ABB. While there Ulrich led the acquisition of Baldor Electric, the largest maker of industrial motors in North America. It was also the largest acquisition of ABB to date with a price tag of $4.2 billion. 

Ulrich became the CEO of the ABB Group in September 2013. ABB is leading power and automation technology company, based in Zurich, Switzerland. 

Steve Holliday: National Grid CEO

Steve Holliday was born on October 26, 1956, in Exeter, United Kingdom. Steve earned a  Bachelor of Science degree in Mining from the University of Nottingham in 1978. He began his career at Exxon joining the energy company in also in 1978.

Steve spent 19 years of his early career at Exxon leaving the company in 1997. While at Exxon he gained experience in the various aspects of the oil industry.  By the time Steve was 30 years old he was the operations manager of the Fawley refinery. This was the largest refinery of Exxon outside the US. From 1990 to 1994 he was assigned to the US. In his last post at Exxon he was responsible for the company’s international gas business throughout Asia and the Far East, where he led several projects associated with the development of new markets, including China. 

Before Steve joined National Grid he was on the Board of British Borneo Oil and Gas as was responsible for the successful development of its international business in Brazil, Australia and West Africa. He also played an important role in the merger of the company with Hardy Oil & Gas in 1998. 

Steve joined National Grid in March 2001 as the Board Director responsible for the UK and Europe. In October 2002, National Grid Group plc and Lattice Group merged, after which he became responsible for the Group’s electricity and gas transmission business.  Steve was promoted from Group Director (responsible for worldwide Transmission operations) to Group Director responsible for UK Gas Distribution and Business Services. 

Steve became CEO in January 2007. He has also been a Non-Executive Director of Mark & Spencer plc since 2004. 

Steve leads a behemoth. It is an electricity and gas company that connects consumers to energy sources through its networks. The publicly traded company connects more than 7 million gas and electric consumers to energy sources in the Northeast US. In the UK it runs the gas and electricity systems.