Diana Jenkins

"In her biography on the Room 23 website, Roger Jenkins isn't even mentioned. And before the interview I've been told that she won't speak about him. But he looms large. Until a month or so ago, he was head of Barclays' controversial tax division and the highest-paid banker in the City (the highest-paid employee in a FTSE 100 company ever, in fact), reportedly earning more than £40m a year. At the height of the credit crisis, it was Roger Jenkins who persuaded Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor al-Thani, a Qatari prince and manager of the nation's sovereign wealth fund, to invest £8bn in Barclays, thus saving it from falling under control of the Bank of England...

"But then there's also her bikini business – she's partners with designer Melissa Odabesh – and her film-distribution business, in which she is a partner with Will Smith, and her film-development business, with Tamara Mellon. Not to mention her two foundations, the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Justice Clinic at UCLA which was established with a $4m donation, and the Irnis Catic Foundation, the largest organisation of its kind in Bosnia."


 * 2008 winner of the Centre of Peace and Multiethnic Cooperation peace award