13. Jiang Jianqing

Title: Chairman and executive director, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China

Country: China

Age: 62

Jiang commands Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world’s largest commercial bank with $3.5 trillion in assets. Before starting as a teller at ICBC in 1984, he toiled on farms and in coal mines during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. When he took over as president in 2000 (he was tapped as chairman five years later), the bank was almost insolvent; today it generates $45 billion in annual profit, more than twice as much as JPMorgan Chase, the largest US commercial lender.

Jiang has also been an alternate member of the Communist Party’s Central Committee — the country’s top political governing body — since 2002. In 2014 he became the first Chinese banker to serve as cochairman of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.