Masaki Sakuyama: Mitsubishi Electric President & CEO

Masaki Sakuyama was born in 1952 in Hyogo Prefecture. In 1977 he joined Mitsubishi Electric Corporation as an engineer in the company’s Kobe Works. Masaki rose through the ranks and in 2008 was named Executive Officer and Group President of Energy & Industrial Systems Group of Mitsubishi Electric. 

In 2010, he became Senior Vice President and General Manager of Corporate Strategic Planning Division. Masaki’s star was clearly on the rise when in 2012, he was appointed Executive Vice President and Group President of Semiconductor & Device Group. On April 1, 2014, he became the President and CEO of Mitsubishi Electric. 

The company that Masaki leads is one of the largest publicly trade firms in the world. It generates annual sales in excess of $40 billion and has 124,305 employees. It was founded in 1921 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. 

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation manufactures and sells electrical and electronic products and systems all over the world. The Energy and Electric Systems segment offers turbine generators, nuclear power plant and power electronic equipments among others. 

The company’s Industrial Automation Systems segment offers programmable logic and computerized numerical controllers, inverters, servomotors, human-machine interface, hoists, magnetic switches among others. 

Its Information and Communication Systems segment provides wireless and wired communication systems, surveillance camera, satellite communication and radar equipment, antennas, missile and fire control systems, broadcasting and information systems equipment, data transmission devices, network security systems and more. 

The firm’s Electronic Devices segment offers power modules, high-frequency devices, and optical and LCD devices. Its Home Appliances segment provides LCD televisions, air conditioners, air-to-water heat pump boilers, refrigerators, electric fans, ventilators, photovoltaic power generation and hot water supply systems, LED and fluorescent among other products.

Having risen through the ranks Masaki knows a lot about the company from first hand experience. This will surely come in handy when making decisions about the company’s future and how capable the company would be in executing plans given his bottom to top experience. 

Ma Huateng: Tencent Holdings Chairman & CEO

Ma Huateng was born on October 29, 1971, in Chaoyang District, Shantou, Guangdong, China. He graduated from Shenzhen University. 

In 1998, Ma co-founded Tencent. Its first offering Tencent QQ, an instant messaging tool became very popular in China. The company soon expanded and is now one of the top three Chinese internet companies along with Alibaba and Baidu. 

Tencent’s QQ instant messaging reached a total of 784 million active users by end of September 2012. This was an increase of 10 percent over the previous year. The company’s mobile messaging application, WeChat, has surpassed 200 million by the end of 2012. Tencent’s diverse services include web portals, e-commerce, and multiplayer online games. Online game like Legend of Yulong and Legend of Xuanyuan increased revenue by over one half up to $5.1 billion, with a $1.5 billion profit margin. 

Ma is also known as Pony Ma and in 2007 and 2014 was named by Time magazine as one of the world’s most influential people. With a net worth of $18.8 billion as of January 2016, Ma is one of the top 100 richest people in the world. 

Richard Gonzalez: AbbVie Chairman & CEO

Richard Gonzalez who is in his early 60s is one of a very few CEO who does not have a college degree but this did not prevent him from rising in the highly competitive pharmaceutical industry. He rose to become Executive Vice President, Pharmaceutical Products Group, of Abbott Laboratories where he led the global pharmaceutical business, including commercial operations, research and development and manufacturing. Richard also served as President and Chief  Operating Officer, before he briefly retired. 

This was in 2007 when he was diagnosed with throat cancer. He retired for about two years then went back to work for Abbott. What was fortunate for Richard was the decision that the company would be split in half to better address the future environment. The company AbbVie was spun off from Abbott Laboratories 2013, where it used to be part of the medical devices and nutrition business.He became Chairman & CEO of AbbVie. The company has as its prized asset the anti-inflammatory drug Humira. With sales of $12.5 billion in 2014, its is one of the biggest drugs in the world.

One of his boldest move was buying cancer drugmaker Pharmacyclis Inc for $21 billion. The key drug of Pharmacyclics is Imbruvica, a cancer drug that may possibly match Humira with its worldwide sales promise. AbbVie is forecasting its portion of peak sales from Imbruvica to be approximately $7 billion. Since the drug is being marketed with Johnson & Johnson, total end-suer sales for may be as high as $12 billion for Imbruvica. 

AbbVie, Inc. is a research-based biopharmaceutical company headquartered in North Chicago, Illinois. It engages in the discovery, development, manufacture and sale of a broad line of proprietary pharmaceutical products. The company’s products are used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, Crohn’s disease, HIV, cystic fibrosis complications, low testosterone, thyroid disease, Parkinson’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and complications associated with chronic kidney disease, among other indications. It also has a pipeline of new medicines, including various compounds or indications in Phase II or Phase III development. 

The company that Ricard leads employs 26,000 people and has annual sales in excess of $19 billion. 

Samuel Tsien: OCBC Group CEO

Samuel Tsien earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has 36 years of solid banking experience. From 1995 to 2006, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of Bank of America (Asia), and Asia Consumer and Commercial Banking Group Executive of Bank of America Corporation. 

Before joining OCBC Bank, Samuel was the President and Chief Executive Officer of China Construction Bank (Asia) when China Construction Bank acquired Bank of America (Asia). He joined OCBC Bank in July 2007 as Senior Executive Vice President, in charge of the Group’s corporate and commercial banking business. He assumed in 2008, the role as Global Head of Global Corporate Bank with added responsibilities of overseeing the financial institution and transaction banking businesses. 

Samuel who is in his late 50s was appointed Group Chief Executive Officer on April 15, 2012. 

Overseas-Chinese Banking Corp. Ltd is one of the largest public companies in the world with annual sales of over $8 billion with 29,512 employees.  It engages in banking, life assurance, general insurance, asset management, investment holding, future, and stockbroking businesses. The bank’s headquarters is in Singapore. 

R. Milton Johnson: HCA Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

R. Milton Johnson is a native of Nashville, Tennessee. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Belmont University. He worked as an accountant with what is now Ernst & Young and spent a couple of years working with HCA accountants. So when he joined HCA in 1982 he had been walking the halls of their headquarters since 1980. So he had actually been involved with HCA right after graduating from college. 

During the period HCA had a large international presence, Milton worked with executives responsible for managing hospitals in the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, and Saudi Arabia. He developed relationships with many of those men and women over time. R. Milton even helped them with their personal tax returns. When HCA offered him a position in the tax department, it wasn’t as if he was joining an unfamiliar company in fact is was quite the opposite. 

In 1987 he was head of HealthTrust tax department when HCA spun off the company. He came back to HCA as vice president of tax when HealthTrust was taken back in by HCA. 

R. Milton climbed the corporate ladder becoming senior vice president and controller, then executive vice president and chief financial offer. In 2009, he was appointed to the board of directors of HCA.  In 2011, he was named president of HCA. In January 2014 ,he began serving as the company’s CEO and on December 2014, he also became chairman. 

R. Milton leads a huge organization, a close to $36 billion integrated healthcare system that includes around 166 hospitals, 113 freestanding surgery centers, and more than 35,000 affiliated physicians  in 20 states and the United Kingdom. The company has its in payroll 220,000 employees of which around 35 percent are registered nurses. 

Milton is a committed volunteer and has held offices in a number of organizations within the community. He is currently a co-chair of Partnership 2020 with the Nashville Chamber of Commerce and serves on the boards of Nashville Health Care Council and the United Way of Metro Nashville, among others. 

Chang-Soo Kim: Samsung Life Insurance Co CEO & President

There are many huge corporations run by competent managers who are not that well know internationally. Chang-Soo Kim runs one of the largest companies on the planet and must therefore have what it takes to handle such a large responsibility. 

Chang-Soo Kim is a business administration graduate of Korea University. Among the various managerial positions he has held include serving as Vice President and Head of Plant and Machinery Division of Samsung C&T Corporation. He was also the Chief Executive Officer and President of Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance Co., Ltd. 

In January 28, 2014, Kim became Chief Executive Officer and President of Samsung Life Insurance Co., Ltd. He also serves as an Executive Director at Samsung Life Insurance Co., Ltd. 

Samsung Life Insurance Co., Ltd. was founded on April 24, 1957, and is based in Seoul, South Korea. It engages in the life insurance and financial services business. The firm runs its businesses through the following divisions: insurance, loan, corporate pension, fund and trust. It conducts its business within the domestic market and to overseas markets.

It is one of the largest publicly listed companies in the world with 5,353 employees and sales of $24 billion. 

Lamberto Andreotti: Bristol-Myers Squibb Chairman

Lamberto Andreotti was born on July 6, 1950, in Rome, Italy. He earned an engineering degree from Sapienza University of Rome. Lamberto would later earn a Master of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

He worked for a number of pharmaceutical companies such as Farmitalia Carlo Erba, KABI Pharmacia and Pharmacia & Upjohn. Lamberto then joined Bristol-Myers Squibb in 1998 as Vice President and General Manager, European Oncology and Italy. He rose further up the executive ladder holding roles of increasing responsibility. Lamberto was elected to the Board of Directors in 2009. In 2010 he was named Chief Executive Officer, he served in this role for five years. 

Under his stewardship, the company transformed becoming a leader in the biopharma industry. The company is now known for its robust pipeline and portfolio of innovative medicines, it has also pioneered the increasingly promising field of immuno-oncology.  Earlier in the year he announced his retirement as CEO to coincide right after his 65th birthday to devote more time to his personal life. 

Since Lamberto assumed the CEO role, based in early January 2015, company shares have gained around 196 percent compared to 90 percent for the S&P 500. Lamberto is now the Chairman of Bristol-Myers Squibb, the pharma company that generates annual revenue of around $16 billion. 

Bristol-Myers was founded in 1887 by William McLaren Bristol and John Ripley Myers in Clinton, New York. Squibb on the other hand was founded in 1858 by Edward Robinson Squibb in Brooklyn, New York.  The Squibb corporation served as a major supplier of medical goods to the Union Army during the United States Civil War, providing portable medical kits containing morphine, surgical anesthetics, and quinine for the treatment of malaria (which was endemic in most of the eastern United States at that time). 

Bristol-Myers Squibb was formed in 1989, following the merger of its predecessors Bristol-Myers and the Squibb Corporation.