The new United States ambassador to China, Max Baucus, said advancing a bilateral investment treaty between the world’s two largest economies will be his top priority.  “While we still have a lot of work to do for concluding the treaty, helping move it forward would be a top priority of mine. I am going to work very hard to make this bilateral investment treaty successful,”Baucus said while addressing members of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.
A member of the Democratic Party, Baucus was appointed to the post by US President Barack Obama in February, succeeding Gary Locke.  When he was in the US Senate, Baucus strongly supported permanent normal trade relations with China and China’s subsequent entry into the World Trade Organization.
China and the US started discussing the treaty in 2008, but talks stalled with China’s insistence on a long list of protection for some sectors.

The US is the world’s top recipient of foreign direct investment, followed by China. Analysts believe a bilateral investment pact will help reshape global investment rules.  “The Sino-US treaty talks and the introduction of the ‘negative list’ approach in the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone show the Chinese government’s determination to reform the regulations for foreign investment,”Zhan Xiaoning, director of the investment and enterprise division at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, said.

“China needs to engage in the building of higher global investment rules through participating in high-standard bilateral, regional and multilateral investment pact talks,”Zhan said.  Baucus noted that China is “again at a critical junction”in its development and new challenges have emerged.

“We will use the dialogue to advocate aggressively the things that matter most to the business community, that is, removing investment restrictions, improving (intellectual property rights) protection, increasing transparency, especially in regulatory proceedings, and creating a level playing field for all companies in China,”the ambassador said.

The chief executive of Takeda Pharmaceutical struck back against shareholders who are angry about his plan to appoint a foreigner as president, saying the move was necessary for global growth.  Two months ago, a group of more than 100 shareholders and former employees wrote to the board of Japan’s biggest drug maker to protest the ascension of a non-Japanese, Christophe Weber, to the top position of Takeda as akin to “hijacking by foreign capital.” In response, Takeda CEO Yasuchika Hasegawa made an impassioned 30-minute speech at the annual meeting in Osaka, defending his blueprint for overseas expansion.

The founding family behind Asia’s largest pharmaceutical company is up in arms at the present board’s plans to appoint a non-Japanese person as its first foreign president.
A former executive of British pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline, 47-year-old Mr Weber is scheduled to be formally installed at a shareholders’ meeting.
But in a boardroom row that has echoes of Michael Woodford’s unhappy – and brief – stint as president of Olympus Corp in 2011, the family that set up Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. has allied itself with former members of the board to oppose the confirmation of Mr Weber as president.

110 members of the Takeda family and former executives have signed a letter of protest to the present board of the 230-year-old company in protest at the approval.
According to the Yomiuri newspaper, their opposition is based on the belief that Mr Weber could sanction the sale of the company to a foreign company and its technologies would be transferred overseas and lost.

To what extent are companies national or international today?  Certainly in the US, foreign nationals run many big companies, presumably because they are the best people available for the CEO job.

Safra Catz of Oracle is at the very top of the list, with a package worth 43 miliion dollars. Catz also serves as co-President of the company. Most of her pay came from stock option grants.  Pamela J. Craig of Accenture is No. 8, with comp worth over 12 million annually. She had retired last year and much of her salary is represented by accelerated vesting of some shares.

Ms. Craig noted that the CFO job is not for the feint-hearted, but if you can collaborate with the CEO and the Board, things can click for you.  She noted that stock options may not be the best incentive for executives.  Stock grants by the board when certain performance criteria are met may be better.

Marcia Dall, CFO of Erie Industries, remarks that women still have a tough time overcoming society’s knee-jerk expectations of women as moms.  “It’s hard when society judges you because you haven’t always been with your children.”

Fed up with platitudes and more than ready for action, hundreds of women threw their weight behind more regulation to force a better gender mix in organisations in polling at last week’s Global Summit of Women.

Women came from 81 countries and from every possible background, but the common cause was all about getting more women into decision making roles — in communities, government and business.

A poll of the audience on the best option for making progress revealed a clear endorsement of quotas, with the host country France already leading the way.  According to a panel of CEOs, which included ex-Telstra Boss Sol Trujillo and Societe Generale head Frederick Oudea, the momentum is growing for more gender balanced organisations — although Trujillo did not believe quotas are the answer.

But it was also clear that the 2011 introduction of quotas in France – with a goal of 40% by 2017 – is having an impact. Women make up about 20% of directors at larger French companies at the moment.

“France has raised the bar for other countries interested in opening up corporate board rooms to women,” according to Irene Natividad, the Summit chair and head of the Washington-based Corporate Women Directors International (CWDI) which released a study on gender on boards at the forum.

The top ten companies globally for women directors did include Australia’s Woolworths, which was better than nothing. But as Natividad pointed out, French companies were the best represented while organisations from rapidly growing economies, such as China, did not fare well.

Quotas are one lever for change but fund manager Joe Keefe, the CEO of Pax Global Funds, said tackling the travesty of just 16% women on Fortune 500 boards rests with shareholders and corporate ranks too.

“Who elects boards? Shareholders. So if you think it’s a travesty but you are investing in funds then you are part of the problem and not the solution – or your money is.”

Pax recently launched a Global Women’s Index Fund which includes about 400 companies with better levels of women in senior roles. Along with shareholder and investor action, pressure to deliver behaviour change in the corporates that dominate the world economy is a priority, Keefe said.

The power to change the rules to make workplaces more equitable lies with corporates, Microsoft France president Alain Crozier said during a debate on whether women can ‘have it all’. He said blending caring and paid work and ensuring women’s careers are not derailed is achievable if the will is there.

“Why aren’t there reporting requirements on gender pay?” one participant asked.

The role of the media in changing norms around women’s leadership and roles was also a focus for a panel discussion. Bloomberg editor-at-large Lisa Kasenaar is running Global Women’s Coverage for the media company which aims to mainstream women as commentators in all coverage.

The media must be encouraged to frame the conversation about diversity and establish role models, Cassandra Kelly said during a discussion on women and boards. She outlined the progress made under Australia’s voluntary regulation regime and the importance of women supporting each other to ensure culture change.

As the conference ended, there was a mixture of hope for change with continuing frustration about the pace of progress and the need to challenge entrenched attitudes that continue to categorise diversity as doing good rather than an economic and human rights imperative around the world.

If you were Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, making nearly $25 million for one year’s worth of work — not to mention getting $50,000 in company-paid personal security — the gender pay gap would probably not be a major concern. Women scaling the heights of corporate America tend to have compensation packages that are as jaw-droppingly gigantic as men at a similar level.

On the Equilar list, the technology industry has the most women — Ms. Mayer, Virginia M. Rometty of IBM and Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard. Their median pay, $17.6 million, is more than that of the male tech chiefs, who earn $15.9 million. The pay of at least three other women who are high-profile tech executives would have put them on the list had they been chief executives, according to Equilar: Safra A. Catz, president and chief financial officer of Oracle ($43.6 million); Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook ($16.1 million); and Angela Ahrendts, the new retail chief at Apple. Her salary and bonus have not yet been released, but her equity award alone would catapult her near the top of the list, at $68.5 million.

One reason tech might be better for women on the executive track is that the industry is young and fast-moving, without the entrenched behaviors and prejudices of more traditional businesses.

“Because the industry’s reinventing itself all the time, there’s not a set model about who could or should be successful,” said Susan Wojcicki, the chief executive of YouTube.

That became clear when Yahoo hired Ms. Mayer as chief executive when she was seven months pregnant — a decision that would be hard to imagine in more conservative industries like finance.

Tech jobs generally tend to be more flexible about priorities outside work, especially for high-performing employees the companies do not want to lose. The result is a narrower pay gap in tech, along with other benefits for women. Ms. Wojcicki insists on being home from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. to be with her four children.  Women CEOs