She is betting big on the U.S. Areva is building a nuclear power plant component factory with Northrup Grumman in Virginia.

FORBES: Areva Chief Talks Power

And as a student he had worked during the holidays in various factories belonging to the Fiat group: on a car-production line in Poland, in a dealership in France and in a component factory in the English Midlands, where he boarded with a very ordinary English family.

ECONOMIST: Face value

Gou envisions a fully-automated (and presumably almost employee-free) component factory inside of five years, has qualms about expanding his manufacturing presence in America ("I don't want to spend time having people sue me every day"), and pays executive bonuses out of his own dividends to protect the company's bottom line... so yeah, he's quite the industrialist.

ENGADGET: BusinessWeek profiles Foxconn founder (and veritable pitbull) Terry Gou

Factory output, the most important component of industrial production, was dragged lower by a steep 3.2 percent decline in auto and auto parts production.

WSJ: US factory output falls on weak auto production