Christine Lagarde

Even as a teenager, Christine Lagarde, now 55, was a high-achiever, winning a place on the French synchronised swimming team. The sport seems to mimic how she conducts business: avoiding collisions with her counterparts, all the while looking unflappable and elegant. She rose to head the global law firm Baker & McKenzie, before becoming France's trade minister in 2005; under her watch, exports reached record levels. In 2007, she was the first woman appointed finance minister in a G8 country. Never afraid to speak out, Lagarde has said she believed the 2008 global economic crash was caused, in part, by the global banks' male-dominated, aggressively testosterone-fuelled culture. This month, Lagarde plans to shepherd through France's plans to strengthen the eurozone at a vital summit. In a recent interview she complained that the euro had been given "fragile foundations" by its "founding fathers": "Founding fathers not mothers, notice. Regrettably there was no woman at the table at the time . . . We are now working on [foundations] which are bigger, stronger."