Speculation that Meng was being groomed for Huawei's pinnacle has increased in recent years. She also appears to have eschewed the socialite lifestyle of her much-younger half-sister, Annabel Yao, a ballerina studying at Harvard University. In contrast to the often colourless male executives who populate the upper ranks of China Inc., Meng is known for an easy smile and good English, and appears to have taken not one but two English names - 'Cathy' and 'Sabrina'.ĭespite being dubbed the 'Princess of Huawei', she is said to be respected among company rank and file as approachable and self-deprecating. Meng then began to assume a higher profile, representing Huawei overseas where she rubbed elbows with world leaders and corporate chieftains, including a 2014 business forum where she sat on a panel with the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Little is publicly known about the un-listed Huawei's internal operations, however, and Meng remained an obscure figure until 2011, when the company unveiled its top leadership for the first time with Meng listed as CFO. Huawei credits her for re-organising the company's financial and IT architecture beginning in the early 2000s, so that the company could cope with its rapid global growth. In interviews, she has referred to him as 'President Ren', rather than 'father'.īut Meng's career soon took off and she rose to top financial positions. 'He is a CEO at work, and a father at home,' Meng once said of Ren, to emphasise that competence, not connections, determined one's path at Huawei. This may have been aided by the fact that she took her mother's surname from a young age, for reasons that remain unclear. Meng has sought to stress her own 'humble' beginnings, with Chinese media reporting that she once penned an internal memo claiming that her first tasks at the Shenzhen-based company involved secretarial work - answering phones and acting as a typist.īut Meng, reported to be in her mid-40s, went on to earn a Chinese management degree and later joined Huawei's finance department.Īccording to Chinese media, Meng kept her head down for years, to such an extent that few knew who her father was. Ren, 74, a former People's Liberation Army engineer, founded the company with a few thousand dollars in 1987, growing it into one of the world's leading suppliers of hardware for telecommunications networks. Its officials have taken pains to stress that the company is a meritocracy, but there seems little doubt that family ties aided Meng's rise. Huawei is the second-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world after Samsung Electronics, having overtaken Apple earlier this year, and is ranked 72nd on the Fortune Global 500 with revenues of nearly $90 billion in the most recent fiscal year. Doing so would make her one of the world's top female corporate bosses.

Male socialite telecom heir