Brit-company four join top women

FOUR women running British companies made it into today's 'Top 50 Women to Watch' survey by the Wall Street Journal.

American Rose Marie Bravo has achieved celebrity status worldwide with a turnaround of the chav's favourite brand, Burberry, since she became chief executive of the fashion group in 1997.

She is one of Europe's best-paid women, collecting just over £3.1m in salary and bonus last year. Bravo, 53, is number six in the WSJ's list of women 'Running the Show'.

At number 13 is another American, Marjorie Scardino, 57, chief executive of Pearson. She joined the Financial Times and Penguin group in 1997 but made her mark shifting its emphasis away from newspapers and books to become one of the world's top two educational publishers. Her pay package last year was £825,000.

Linda Cook, 46, is ninth in the list of 'In Line to Lead'. Brought rapidly to the forefront at Shell in May after the oil and gas giant shredded its board in the wake of its reserves accounting scandal, Cook is now director for gas and power and one of its top five executives.

Elisabeth Murdoch, 36, may have split from her father Rupert's media empire but the WSJ still rates her ninth in its 'Inheritors' list, suggesting she may yet end up running all or part of News Corp. She pumped $2.7m of her own money into UK TV production house Shine.

Globally, the top three slots go to Carly Fiorina of Hewlett Packard, Margaret Whitman of eBay and Andrea Jung of cosmetics group Avon.