4. Sabine Keller-Busse: Model Student In Focus

Her promotion to CEO of UBS' domestic unit – which includes a sizable wealth manager, an investment and corporate bank, and a lucrative asset manager – marks a first for women. Until now the operating chief of the wider UBS group, Sabine Keller-Busse is getting the chance to show her mettle running a business. 

A former McKinsey partner, she stepped up the last leg of a remote working program for most employees just as the lock-down began, which reportedly earned her excellent grades in an internal evaluation of top executives.

2021 could be her year: should CEO Ralph Hamers be toppled over a Dutch money-laundering investigation, she counts as one of three viable internal candidates to replace him. To be sure, the opposite is just as true: the job has catapulted three executives out (or first up, then out) in the last six years, as finews.com noted last month.