Meet the Queens of the Deal: These multi-millionaire ladies soared to the highest of company Britain whereas elevating youngsters – and this is how YOU can observe of their footsteps

Takeover mania has the stock market in its grip with two multi-billion-pound bids sealed last week alone.

Nothing so unusual about that, you might think – except that both were led by women.

Amanda Blanc, the chief executive of insurance company Aviva, successfully pursued smaller rival Direct Line, and Margherita Della Valle, the boss of telecoms giant Vodafone, pulled off an audacious merger with Three.

The duo follow on the heels of Debbie Crosbie, the woman in charge of the UK’s biggest building society Nationwide, who recently sealed a deal to buy Virgin Money.

The City loves the drama of a takeover, where one company buys another, often accompanied by clashing egos, huge fees, and sometimes bitter rows.

For decades, bids have been a testosterone-fuelled macho preserve but this year a handful of high-flying women are being hailed as Queens of the Deal.

The trio of Crosbie, Blanc and Della Valle have presided over takeover bids collectively worth £20bn.

All three are in their fifties, at the peak of their careers and each has combined motherhood with a rise to the top of the highly competitive world of corporate Britain, where they earn multi-million-pound pay-packets. This is blonde ambition taken to a new level.

Ahead of a major conference this week in London on Women, Money & Power, they are role models for a new generation of female executives.

So who are the Queens of the Deal? What makes them tick – and while you may not aspire to the boardroom, what can you learn from them to boost YOUR career?

Amanda Blanc 

Job: Chief executive of Aviva

Age: 57

Children: Two daughters

Big Deal: £3.6bn takeover of Direct Line

Pay: £6.6m

Loves: Stilettos

Hates: Sexists

Blanc, 57, has been chief executive of the £13bn insurance giant Aviva since 2020. During that time, the share price has more than doubled – and she was created a Dame in the 2023 New Year’s Honours.

Her proven ability to deliver for shareholders – in stark contrast to the male bosses who went before her – has generated huge excitement over her every move. Her takeover of smaller rival Direct Line for £3.6bn, creating a motor insurance powerhouse, is her boldest yet.

Direct Line has been haemorrhaging customers – and so was ripe for an overhaul. Blanc’s purposeful pursuit of her target is typical of her resolve and efficiency, according to those who know her.

When she arrived at Aviva, the insurance giant – made up of a collection of venerable brands including Norwich Union and General Accident – had performed disappointingly for shareholders under a string of male bosses.

She rolled up her sleeves, sold off overseas operations she considered not to be core to the business, cut unnecessary costs and is now looking to increase Aviva’s share of the market.

One fund manager said: ‘Amanda has done a great job – and I suspect that the time is coming when more people will be properly appreciating that.’

Anyone who has spent any time with Blanc will attest to her steely determination. One commented: ‘She exudes power and authority – there’s a strength about her. She’s a commanding figure, and your first thought is that you would not want to be on the wrong side of her.’

Some of this grit is the product of her background. Amanda Fisher – Blanc is her married name – comes from Treherbert in the Rhondda Valley in south Wales, where she was educated in the local comprehensive. Both her grandfathers were miners.

Her earliest ambition was to be a musician. But, after university, she joined the insurance industry instead, starting her career at Commercial Union, where she rose quickly up the ranks. Her belief that insurance companies play a vital role when ordinary people hit trouble has propelled her to the boardroom.

Blanc retains her South Wales accent, which is still unusual in a sector dominated by middle-aged males from the south of England.

This is one of the disarming qualities that sets Blanc apart from her largely posh male counterparts.

She is unashamedly fond of structured dresses and coats, often in satin or jacquard, and she adores stiletto heels – to the extent that her X/Twitter account is @Amandas_shoes. If anyone finds this frivolous, they certainly dare not say so.

On BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, she admitted that her footwear collection was ‘extensive’, so large, in fact, that she keeps the number a secret from her husband Ken. The couple has two daughters.

Blanc has been open about the sexism she has experienced in her role at Aviva and elsewhere. This has taken various forms. During her first years at the insurer she came under pressure from the activist investor Cevian which was pressing Aviva to boost shareholder returns.

In some quarters, this campaign was felt to have an undercurrent of opposition to a woman at the head of a FTSE 100 company.

At Aviva’s 2022 annual general meeting, sexist shareholders made jibes including that she was ‘not the man for the job’.

She also encountered homophobia and misogyny when she sat on the board of the Welsh Rugby Union, and ended up handing in her resignation.

The City loves this Queen of the Deal. Aviva’s current share price is 489p, but analysts are targeting a rise to 540p.

If this comes to pass, will Blanc celebrate with another pair of sharp stilettos? Probably.

SECRETS OF HER SUCCESS: Don’t stand for sexism. Challenge the chauvinists and don’t get angry, get to the top. Work out exactly what you want to achieve and the most efficient way of doing so. Blanc doesn’t let her ego get in the way of hitting her goals. And dress for success: Blanc’s outfits embody femininity plus power.

Debbie Crosbie

Job: Chief executive of Nationwide

Age: 53

Children: One daughter

Big deal: £2.9bn takeover of Virgin Money

Pay: £2.4m

Loves: Dominic West

Hates: Branch closures

Until this summer, Debbie Crosbie, 53, was the boss of Britain’s biggest building society, the Nationwide, which is a big achievement in itself.

She now holds the crown as the most powerful female banker in the country after she masterminded a £2.9bn takeover of Virgin Money.

Crosbie, who is described by one observer as a ‘streetfighter’, is seen by her fans, and there are a lot of them, to have pulled off the banking coup of the year. Her aim is to create a mutual financial services business owned by its members that is big enough to take on the High Street banks. Because Nationwide has no shareholders to placate, she believes she can channel better interest rates and benefits in the direction of her members.

Crosbie, who was born and raised in Glasgow, is often described as ‘steely,’ ‘no nonsense’ and ‘what you see is what you get.’

Would the same comments be made of a male executive with a direct manner? It’s debatable.

She has set herself a tough challenge. Her contention is that the merger will transform not only Nationwide, but the building society sector more generally, by promoting the virtues of mutuality.

But mergers in the banking and building society field have a chequered record and are by no means guaranteed to succeed.

So far, however, the Virgin Money purchase is regarded as a clever strategic manoeuvre.

Nationwide recently revealed it has made a £2.3bn gain on the deal, because Virgin Money was under-valued, which suggests Crosbie has a sharp eye for a bargain. (Though some observers do carp it was cheap for a reason.)

In any event, she is running a much bigger operation following the takeover of Virgin Money, which was founded by Richard Branson in 1995 and is now the UK’s sixth largest retail bank.

Branson will net about £400m from the deal for the use of the Virgin Money name.

The deal is the pinnacle, so far, of Crosbie’s 25-year career in banking.

Before joining Nationwide in 2022, she was the boss of TSB and her previous jobs include a senior role at Clydesdale and Yorkshire banking group.

She is not afraid to take on the banking establishment and was behind Nationwide’s series of TV advertisements starring actor Dominic West as an arrogant and complacent manager intent on fleecing customers and aggrandizing himself.

This annoyed competitors so much that Santander filed a complaint to the advertising watchdog, alleging it that it ‘discredited and denigrated’ its banking rivals.

The watchdog criticised the ads for claiming it was not closing branches when it had recently shut some. Crosbie continued with the campaign and new ads returned this autumn. She has promised that Nationwide will stay everywhere it has a branch at least until 2028. It now has more branches than any other banking brand.

Like Blanc, Crosbie focuses on customer service and delivering benefits to her savers and borrowers.

In the year to April, Crosbie was paid £2.41m. She stands to earn £3.42m if her performance is outstanding.

She might also spend some of it on shoes, since pictures of this Queen of the Deal show she shares Blanc’s penchant for a stylish heel.

Crosbie says she has only ever impressed her daughter, now aged 21, once in her career. This was when, as acting chief executive of the Clydesdale Bank, she became the first woman to have her signature on a Scottish bank note.

If she succeeds at turning Nationwide and Virgin Money into a modern mutual powerhouse, she might impress her daughter a second time…

SECRETS OF HER SUCCESS: A sense of humour can be a big asset in business – as the ads show, it’s possible to make serious points with a smile. Your kids will keep you down to earth – they are the hardest audience of all to impress – and so will your other family and your real friends.

Margherita Della Valle

Job: Chief executive of Vodafone

Age: 59

Children: Two sons

Big deal: £16.5billion takeover of Three in the UK

Pay: £4.38m

Loves: Aubergine parmigiana

Hates: Poor customer service

The boss of Vodafone, Margherita Della Valle is known for her grace under pressure.

A City figure says: ‘She is a safe pair of hands – in the very best meaning of that phrase. She is properly on top of stuff, having been at Vodafone for three decades.’

He continues: ‘There’s no ego in her manner, like some male CEOs I know. It’s all about what’s best for Vodafone – and particularly what’s best for the customer.’

Della Valle has just signed off the £16.5bn merger of her company’s UK arm with Three, the mobile operator owned by the Hong Kong empire of CK Hutchison.

The deal – which has been delayed by regulators and other obstacles – represents a milestone in the UK telecoms industry. It’s fair to say plenty of people were sceptical she could pull it off.

Other bosses might be tempted to relax back amid the plaudits. Not this 59-year old married mother of two, whose English still bears the traces of her native Veneto region of Italy.

She is more often to be seen wearing trainers than heels with her well-cut trousers and satin shirts, the better to rush about her offices.

Among the challenges now facing Della Valle are concerns about job losses and higher prices in the wake of the deal.

When she took over as CEO in April 2023, she declared that ‘everything has to change.’ She has a formidable task to overcome the host of problems at this £22.34bn business.

The company has been beset with a myriad issues in its international divisions and gaps in its coverage. Parts of central London are Vodafone no-or-low signal zones..

The takeover of Three represents an opportunity to – finally – boost our nation’s deplorably poor connectivity – Britain ranks at 22 out of 25 European countries for 5G, the most up-to-date technology.

Della Valle’s focus in the integration will be the technology, of course, but always with the customer in mind. In future, she will be serving no fewer than 29 million of them.

In this huge endeavour, Della Valle will be relying on what she perceives to be her superpower – which is being a woman. As she argues, this means ‘you bring a different perspective’ to deliberations. This is particularly pertinent in the male-dominated world of the ‘telcos’. She is fanatical about customer service, believing it to be neglected by many senior executives. In her view, providing excellence in this field is a route to growth. She is a regular visitor to Vodafone’s customer service centres.

Della Valle’s promotion to the CEO hot seat stabilised Vodafone’s share price but it remains 50pc down over five years at 72p – reflecting the scale of her challenge. Will she revive the shares – a feat her male predecessors did not manage? It remains to be seen, but experts at Goldman Sachs rate the shares a ‘buy’ targeting a price of 100p, which is a sign of confidence.

SECRETS OF HER SUCCESS: Put in the hard work to master your business. Perseverance pays off. While you are working to get the top job, don’t become frustrated but use it as an opportunity to build your knowledge and experience. It may take women longer to climb the ladder than men, but that means they are better equipped when they do. Don’t dwell on the disadvantages of being female but turn it into your superpower. Being the only woman in the room makes you memorable in a sea of suits, and gives you a voice.