Irene, Indra Top Forbes Most Powerful Women List

Watch out Oprah. Move over Lady Gaga. The leading ladies of the consumer goods industry are taking over Forbes list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women. While the First Lady Michelle Obama took the top spot, Kraft's Irene Rosenfeld and PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi placed in the Top 10.

 

To determine the women included on this list, Forbes applied its methodology to a preliminary group of 140 candidates from around the world, Forbes then selected the 100 most influential women from four categories: business, politics, media and lifestyle. To determine rank within each category, as well as overall rank within the list of 100, it applied the same metric--weighting equally a dollar component and a "buzz" factor. In business, the magazine took into account company revenue and total Factiva hits over the last 12 months.

 

Here is what Forbes (peppered with some more facts from CGT) had to say about Rosenfeld, Nooyi and the few of other consumer goods executives that were featured:

 

Her plans to acquire candymaker Cadbury were vehemently opposed by Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway owned 9.4 percent of Kraft. Nonetheless, the deal went through and Kraft's second-quarter revenues rose 25.3 percent to $12.3 billion, boosted largely by Cadbury's business in Europe and developing markets. With a $26.3 million compensation package in 2009, Rosenfeld is the nation's second-highest-paid female, after Yahoo!'s Carol Bartz.

 

This year, Nooyi allocated $20 million of the company's $616-million-a-year ad budget away from traditional to social media spends. A staple of this effort, Pepsi Refresh, lets you submit grant proposals to a Web site, then encourages online voters to choose the winners. Nooyi also completed the purchase of PepsiCo's two largest bottlers, boosting revenues to a projected $60 billion. Nooyi's total annual compensation package last year was $10.6 million.

 

No. 57 - Andrea Jung, Chairman & CEO, Avon Products Inc.

Jung is responsible for developing and executing all of the company's long-term growth strategies, launching new brand initiatives, developing earnings opportunities for women worldwide, and defining Avon as the premier direct seller of beauty products. This year she completed two acquisitions -- Avon's first since the 1990s -- and invested millions in advertising. Her reward? A paycheck of $9.5 million for 2009.

 

No. 75 - Susan Ivey, President & CEO, Reynolds American

Ivey is expanding the company beyond just cigarettes, pushing smoke-free tobacco products like flavored, dissolvable strips that are more discreet and appeal to women. She also recently acquired Swedish company Niconovum AB, which makes gums and sprays that, ironically, could help her customers quit smoking.

 

Ahrendts cut staff and expenses to successfully steer Burberry through the recession. Her plan worked as the company finished off 2009 with 1.93 billion in sales, 12.97 percent increase over 2008. Now, she is looking to gain a younger audience by updating the Burberry look and has been busy buying back licensed branches to refocus the brand and building more stores.

 

To access the full Forbes list, click here.