FORTUNE's annual ranking of America's leading businesswomen
Val Gooding Rank: 16 (2004 rank: 18)
Company: Bupa Based in: Britain Title: CEO
Gooding has one of the fattest wallets of any female executive in Britain. Her compensation package at Bupa, the country's largest private health-services company, totaled $4.6 million last year. But she's also getting stellar results: Since taking over as chief executive in 1998, Gooding, 55, has grown the company 89%, to $6.9 billion last year. In addition to running hospitals and nursing homes in 190 countries, Bupa is working on cutting the backlog of patients waiting for basic procedures in Britain.
From the November 14, 2005 issue
Highest pay
These women are among the highest paid in corporate America. All of them are employed by companies with over $1 billion in sales that filed proxies by September 1, 2005.
Newcomer Charlene Begley heads up GE's plastics division and is the youngest of this group at age 39. She bumped last year's youngest gun, Citigroup CFO Sallie Krawcheck, now 40. But, on average, the Power 50 are in their late 40s.
