1. The Woman of the Minute
As the CEO of Ant Financial, she is the woman of the moment: Lucy Peng hasn’t cultivated any of the showmanship of her Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, who has impersonated Michael Jackson and made a kung fu movie. Despite being one of Asia’s most powerful – and wealthiest – women, little is known of Peng. Like Ma, she taught finance and economics in the 1990s before co-founding Alibaba.
2018 may be Peng’s breakout year: Ant Financial, which she helped carve out of Alibaba four years ago, plans an initial public offering. The firm has been coy on timing, but raised billions earlier this year in what was widely viewed as pre-IPO funding. As if an $100 billion IPO weren’t enough, she also took the reins of Lazada, a an online shop owned by Alibaba, last month.
