World Beaters

By Eric Roston/New York

ROBERT RUBIN Former U.S. Treasury Secretary

When he's not traveling the world for Citigroup or fly casting for bonefish in the Bahamas, Rubin, 62, is working at a new way of promoting freer trade. Sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, Rubin and former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein will lead a bipartisan discussion of how to build a centrist agenda for expanding global trade--and how market-opening treaties might accommodate or neutralize conflicting interest groups.

MAKIKO TANAKA Member of the Diet

Tanaka, 57, doesn't want to be Japan's ninth Prime Minister in 10 years. Necessarily. The daughter of legendary '70s PM Kakuei Tanaka is the most popular politician in Japan, speaking out against the factionalism and corruption that have left the nation powerless to snap out of its 10-year recession. Polls show her ahead in the popularity contest--but that's not the decisive factor for loyalty-driven Liberal Democratic Party Pooh-Bahs.

DOMINGO CAVALLO Economy Minister, Argentina

Cavallo, 54, is prone to call aides and reporters before breakfast or after midnight. And these days he has plenty to talk about. Cavallo earned Argentines' admiration in 1991 when he pegged the peso to the dollar and tamed four-digit inflation. He's still a hero. In March, when Cavallo became the country's third Economy Minister in three weeks, trade unions canceled a general strike and the legislature granted emergency powers to him and President Fernando de la Rua.

RICHARD LI Chairman, Pacific Century CyberWorks

Li, 34, had much more to explain recently than his company's $886 million loss during 2000. For instance, why did he claim to be a 1987 Stanford graduate when he had spent only three years there? Everything looked rosy last spring when Pacific Century paid $36 billion for Cable and Wireless HKT, the biggest corporate buyout in Asia outside Japan. The Stanford admission may have made credibility as big a problem for Li as profitability.

BEVERLY MALONE RCN General Secretary

Malone, 52, takes the Royal College of Nursing's top job in June, bringing American panache and Clinton-era compassion to the dowdy British trade union. Some critics objected to the choice of a Yank, but no one doubts her credentials. She has led the American Nurses Association and was a top Clinton health-care adviser. Times are tough for the R.C.N.'s 330,000 members. Pay raises are tiny despite a shortage of 22,000 nurses.