Carmen Riu was on a flight back to her base in Majorca recently when she spied two fellow chief executives also from the Spanish island: the heads of Air Europa and Sampol. Nothing noteworthy in that – except that all three are women and the heads of family-owned companies in the otherwise male-dominated industries of tourism, air travel and construction. Mrs Riu, co-head and joint owner of Riu Hotels & Resorts for 10 years, says both María José Hidalgo at Air Europa and María del Carmen Sampol at Sampol had been chosen in spite of being the only daughters in families full of men: “The father at Sampol said to me once: ‘Hombre, it is good to see your example because I know now my daughter can do it too’.”
Female executives are rare among listed companies in Europe, a situation that will surely come up at the Women’s Forum in Deauville, France, which starts today. Peter Löscher, the CEO of Siemens who this year criticised the German conglomerate for being “too male”, says it is “a disgrace” that out of more than 190 management board members in the Dax-30 grouping of top German companies, only one is a woman – Bettina von Oesterreich, chief risk officer of Hypo Real Estate.
