Outsiders In.(British businesswomen)

If a spate of recent headlines is any indication, there's never been a better time to be a British businesswoman. In the past few months Barbara Cassani, the former CEO of Go Airlines, was appointed to head London's bid for the 2012 Olympics and sit on the board of Britain's largest retailer of food and clothing, Marks & Spencer. Shell CFO Judith Boynton was promoted to the board of her company, and Laura Tyson continued to make waves as head of the London Business School. Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino led a list of the most powerful women executives outside America, and others, like Morgan Stanley Europe vice chair Amelia Fawcett, and Burberry CEO Rose Marie Bravo, also made the cut.

There's just one problem with this list of British achievers--they're all Americans. According to a recent study by Britain's Cranfield School of Management, 32 percent of women who sit on the boards of companies on the FTSE 100, an index of the largest British companies, are from overseas. (Though no comparable figure exists for men, experts estimate it's much lower.) The majority of those women are American. As one well-known British headhunter puts it, "If you want to sit on a board in Britain, you'd better be American, or have a title."

Historically, American women have always done well in Britain. The country's first female M.P. was Nancy Astor, a spunky Virginian who came to the old country, married well, and as an outsider was perhaps better poised to break the rules of political convention and still be accepted than were her British sisters. Likewise, many American executive women in Britain today say that not being British gives them an excuse to skirt London's stifling business etiquette. "You can get away with a lot more, especially if you use the stereotypes to your advantage," says Allyson Stewart-Allen, an American marketing entrepreneur married to a Labour M.P. "When discussing a potential project, I can say to clients very early on, 'I know it's so American of me to ask, but what's your budget?' That's not usually done here. They can then laugh at how American I am, but I still get to ask my question."

American bluntness can be a big selling point for men or women (though some say it's more palatable when delivered by the fairer sex). The fund-management firm Barclays Global Investors recently chose Stewart- Allen over a British man for a job that involved retraining staff to be more direct when pursuing new clients. That's not an unusual situation. "Americans have a great ability to jump into the heart of an issue, while we sort of flounder around a bit," says Alastair King, a managing director at Galahad Capital who recently completed a project with another American, Lucy Marcus of Marcus Venture Consulting. When asked if this approach causes culture clashes, King says, "Our culture is acclimatizing to them, rather than the other way around."

Americans in Britain are in a strong position to play the role of change agents. Bravo succeeded in transforming formerly stuffy British raincoat maker Burberry into a fashion label worn by the likes of Kate Moss. Cassani proved a major airline could compete with the cheap carriers when she took over Go for British Airways. Tyson, a former economic adviser to Bill Clinton, is updating tenure and fund-raising procedures at the London Business School. Beverly Malone, also a former Clinton adviser (on health care), is pushing the issue of better pay for nurses as head of Britain's (and the world's) largest nursing union.

During the late 1990s boom days, a number of younger American women capitalized on the European desire to adopt Yankee business culture by launching start-ups and networking groups, while generally being more comfortable with hype and the limelight than their British counterparts. A California-born venture capitalist named Julie Meyer founded First Tuesday, which staged high-profile mixers for dot-com types. Before a series of overambitious deals she led began unraveling, Floridian Robin Saunders was the It Girl of London ...