Fortune’s Asia editor Nicholas Gordon just got back from the second-ever Fortune Innovation Forum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Featured onstage was No. 6 on our Most Powerful Women Asia list, and No. 19 on the global MPW list, Malina Ngai, group CEO of AS Watson. More from Nick below on what to know about this important business leader:
Watsons, the flagship brand of AS Watson, likely isn’t a household name to U.S. readers. But the green-colored drugstore can be found all over Asia (and further beyond): Not just in its home base of Hong Kong and nearby mainland China, but also Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Turkey. There are even 200 outlets in Ukraine.
We hosted our second-ever Fortune Innovation Forum last week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with two days of conversations around geopolitics, AI, healthcare, finance, and corporate leadership. But the speaker our guests were perhaps most keen to see spoke at our gala dinner: Malina Ngai, the group CEO of global health and beauty giant, AS Watson. (Another claim to fame: She won a bronze medal for Hong Kong in rowing during the 1994 Asian Games).
AS Watson’s portfolio covers 17,000 outlets across 31 markets; that’s more stores than either CVS or Walgreens. It’s also older than both those brands: Walgreens started in 1901, CVS in 1963. AS Watson’s first store dates to 1841, making the brand as old as Hong Kong itself.
