Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO, ICICI Bank, and Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman, State Bank of India are among the Fortune list of 25 most powerful women “shaping the new world order” in the Asia-Pacific region. Kochhar, ranked highest among Indian women, has been ranked second across the region, while Bhattacharya is 4th and Shikha Sharma, MD and CEO of Axis Bank is 10th in the list. The list is topped by Australian banking major Westpac’s chief Gail Kelly. National Stock Exchange CEO Chitra Ramkrishna (22nd) and HSBC’s Naina Lal Kidwai (23rd) are the other banks finding their place in the list. Releasing the latest rankings, the Fortune magazine said that women around the world are continuing to win the top jobs, so much so that more than a third of the women on this Asia-Pacific list are making their debut in the coveted list, including two from India. Bhattacharya is the first woman to hold the three-year post at the country’s largest bank and oversees a 208-year-old institution with $400 billion in assets and 218,000 employees dispersed among 16,000 branches across India. Ramakrishna is the only woman on the list heading a stock exchange.
