SINGAPORE (November 4, 2025) – Forbes today unveiled its 2025 Asia’s Power Businesswomen list, highlighting 20 accomplished female leaders who are at the forefront of the region’s fast-evolving business and economic landscape. The complete list can be found here and in the November issue of Forbes Asia.
“The women on this year’s Forbes Asia’s Power Businesswomen list are not just adapting to change, but actively shaping the future of the region’s business landscape,” said Rana Wehbe Watson, Editorial Director, Forbes Asia. “Some are forging paths in hot sectors like data centers, semiconductors, and rare earths, while others are guiding their family businesses to new heights.”
Selected for their achievements and proven track records, all women spotlighted this year are newcomers to the list, expanding Forbes Asia’s network of outstanding businesswomen who are making their mark across a wide range of industries.
Among those is Kuok Hui Kwong, who took the reins in August as CEO of Shangri-La Asia, the hotel group that her father, business legend and Malaysia’s wealthiest person Robert Kuok, founded in 1971. Following the May launch of a Shangri-La Signatures Hotel in Hangzhou, she opened two new hotels with a combined 600 rooms at Hongqiao Airport in Shanghai in October, with a third in Kunming slated to welcome guests early next year. The group is also expanding its footprint through managed properties, which now make up nearly a quarter of the over 100 hotels in its portfolio.
In August, Hindustan Unilever (HUL) appointed Priya Nair as its first woman CEO and managing director, in its more than 90-year history in India. Nair joined HUL, the Indian subsidiary of global giant Unilever, three decades ago and worked in sales and marketing before taking charge of the home care, beauty and personal care businesses for South Asia. In 2022, she was posted to Unilever in London to oversee marketing of the beauty and wellbeing portfolio and was appointed two years later as the president of that business. Now back at home, she leads India’s most valuable consumer goods company, with a market cap of $65 billion. Nair is driving a digital push at the company, which sells through a countrywide network of over nine million retail stores, as she pursues her strategy of “volume-led growth.”
Margaret Kao, chairman and CEO of Taipei-based Marketech International, started the company with a colleague in 1988. They went on to build the toolmaker into a global supplier of high-tech machinery and turnkey facilities and services, from clean rooms to water systems, for the semiconductor, optoelectronics and biotech industries. Today, Marketech counts TSMC, Dutch chipmaking-equipment giant ASML and U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology as customers. In 2024, the company’s sales rose for a fifth consecutive year, up 8% to NT$60.7 billion ($2 billion), as foundries continued to increase capacity amid red-hot demand for advanced chips.
HSBC Hong Kong CEO Maggie Ng took charge in October of the London-based banking giant’s biggest market by revenue, as she continues to serve as head of retail banking and wealth, the lender’s most profitable business in its core market. Since joining HSBC in 2020, Ng has spearheaded digital initiatives in retail banking and accelerated the bank’s wealth strategy, which included opening a 930-square-meter wealth center for high-net-worth customers at its Hong Kong headquarters in April. Last year, the wealth and personal banking segment added nearly 800,000 new customers, helping to lift revenue of the Hong Kong operation by 6% to $21 billion.
In the past decade, Amanda Lacaze, Managing Director and CEO, has transformed Lynas Rare Earths from a loss-making miner into a global player. Now as its first woman CEO, she is navigating one of the company’s biggest opportunities yet – filling a China-sized hole in the rare earth industry. Backed by billionaire Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person, Lynas is the world’s second-largest producer of rare earths and the only major producer outside of China.
Temasek’s chief financial officer, Png Chin Yee, will soon have an additional role as president of Temasek Singapore, a new division at the state-owned investment firm, which in August announced a major organizational restructuring to position itself for future growth. From April 2026, Temasek’s vast portfolio will be managed by three wholly owned entities, each with its own leadership team. Png will oversee Temasek’s Singapore-based portfolio companies. Png joined Temasek in 2011, rising to deputy CFO within a decade and becoming CFO in 2023. The firm logged a double-digit increase in its net portfolio value in the year ended in March, which hit a record S$434 billion.
Chung Yoo-kyung, the only daughter of Shinsegae Group’s general chairman Lee Myung-hee, took charge last year of Shinsegae Inc., South Korea’s largest department store chain by revenue, with a mandate to revive growth at her family’s listed flagship business. Investors took positive note of the retailer’s K-beauty push, boosting shares by 20% in the past year. Chung is steering Shinsegae toward that fast-growing market by shifting focus at Chicor, its in-house cosmetics retailer, from imported beauty products to local brands. In June, Chicor opened a new flagship store in Seoul’s upscale Gangnam district, where over half its shelf space is occupied by K-beauty products.
One of Jane Sun’s notable achievements was keeping her Shanghai-based travel services company afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic. The CEO of Trip.com Group gave up her own salary and top executives took steep pay cuts as the firm refunded customers for canceled bookings. The company refocused on the domestic market and launched nearly 100 package tours overnight when the government lifted overseas travel restrictions in early 2023. Today, demand for airline and hotel bookings is soaring. The Nasdaq-traded travel giant, dual-listed in Hong Kong, has a market cap of over $45 billion, nearly double the pre-pandemic level.
Eighth-generation heiress Mariana Zobel de Ayala is shaping the future of the Philippines’ oldest conglomerate, Ayala Corp., where she handles the leasing and hospitality business of its listed $5.8 billion (market cap) property arm, Ayala Land. Under her team’s remit is a $1.5 billion program to refresh its extensive portfolio of malls, offices and hotels. The company’s redevelopment of eight existing malls and buildout of new ones is expected to increase gross leasable area by a third to 2.9 million square meters by 2028. Simultaneously, she is steering a $500 million hospitality outlay that will nearly double Ayala Land’s room inventory to 8,000 by 2030.
DayOne Data Centers CEO Jamie Khoo, is on track to finish two projects by the end of the year, even as she breaks ground for three more. Today, DayOne operates 14 data centers with a combined capacity of 350 megawatts (MW). The company has signed deals to build more than 25 data centers across Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, to bring its total capacity to more than 800MW by early 2027. The company has so far raised $1.9 billion over two funding rounds, in addition to nearly $4 billion in loans, to bankroll the expansion.
For the complete Forbes Asia’s Power Businesswomen list, please visit www.forbes.com/asiapowerbusinesswomen2025
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