Samsara,

An interesting list.

Just a slight revision: The big man at McKinsey these days is: Ian Davis.
He replaced Rajat Gupta a few years ago.

Here's his bio:
http://www.mckinsey.com/aboutus/whoweare/md/index.asp

Citi is a troubled company, in need of a big fix. It remains to be seen how Pandit turns this behemoth around. He himself joined Citi last April,
and though he's great with numbers and all that, it's not clear that he
can come up with a strategy to map the unknowns that face Citi.

Will he break it up? Will he sell off some divisions? Will he keep
everything together and somehow find a way to ride out the housing
crisis? It'll be interesting to watch how he makes decisions, and what
those decisions will mean for Citi. I find many of these future-oriented decisions to be in the province of 'art' than of 'science'.

As for Nepalis, I am sure some will get to such posts. . .  eventually in 20
to 50 years, if not sooner.

But one difference I, in my limited experience, see between my (former) Nepali colleagues and (former) Indian colleagues is that of mindset:
Nepalis tend to give up too easily when confronted with difficult
problems; Indians with comparable IQs and intelligence seem to persist
on and on, until they find/solve the problems. This is the only thing I
found that's remarkably different between my smart Nepali colleagues and
smart Indian colleagues.

And success in anything in life is NOT a matter of high IQ or intelligence
or even a collection of fancy degrees but of sheer, single-minded
persistence to get what you want.

Just my two paisa.

On another note, you may find this interesting on what makes an effective CEO:
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/citations/07/071119.kaplan-wsj.html

GP-ji, enjoyed your take.

oohi
"sleepless in CatMando"
ashu