Meet 10 finance leaders on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Asia list

The ranking spans 14 markets across Asia-Pacific. DBS Group CEO Tan Su Shan retains the No. 1 position. She made history in March 2025 as the first woman to lead DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank.

Twenty-four women are newcomers to this year’s list. Alongside CEOs and chairwomen, the ranking includes finance leaders working across industries. Fortune evaluated candidates based on the scale and performance of their organizations, career trajectory, influence, innovation, and broader societal impact.

Meet 10 finance leaders featured on Fortune’s 2026 Most Powerful Women Asia list:

—Meng Wanzhou, Deputy Chairwoman, Rotating Chairwoman and CFO at Huawei, China (No. 4)
Huawei is a tech company that builds telecommunications equipment, smartphones, and smart devices. It posted 881 billion yuan ($126 billion) in revenue in 2025, its second-highest annual total on record. The company has also reclaimed the top spot in China’s smartphone market.

—Julie Gao, CFO at ByteDance, China (No. 15)
Julie Gao spent more than a decade as a partner at law firm Skadden, specializing in capital markets, before joining ByteDance as CFO in 2022. The technology company is best known as the parent of short-video platform TikTok.

—Lin Tao, CFO and Corporate Executive Officer at Sony Group, Japan (No. 20)
Lin Tao made history in April 2025 as Sony’s first female CFO. She oversees finance, strategy, corporate planning, and investor relations at the global entertainment giant.

—Arundhati Chakraborty, Global Lead for Finance and Global Capability Centers at Accenture, India (No. 39)
Arundhati Chakraborty leads Accenture’s Finance Reinvention Partner unit, one of seven units established in a services reorganization that took effect in March 2026. The unit helps clients improve financial performance and supports the CFO agenda. She also leads Accenture’s global capability centers practice. 

—Phatpuree Chinkulkitnivat, CFO at Bangchak, Thailand (No. 56)
Phatpuree Chinkulkitnivat has held senior accounting and finance leadership roles at Bangchak since 2022 and formally became CFO in November 2023. She is the Thai energy group’s first female finance chief.

—Susanna Hui Hon Hing, Executive Director, Group Managing Director and Group CFO at PCCW, Hong Kong SAR (No. 59)
Susanna Hui joined Cable & Wireless HKT in 1999, before its acquisition by PCCW, a telecommunications, media, and IT company. She has been PCCW’s group CFO since April 2007.

—Arisara Sakulkarawek, CFO at Banpu, Thailand (No. 65)
Arisara Sakulkarawek has been Banpu’s CFO since 2019. She manages the finances of the Thai energy group, whose operations span nine countries.

—Duangdao Wongpanitkrit, Chief Finance and Strategy Officer at Bank of Ayudhya (Krungsri), Thailand (No. 66)
Duangdao Wongpanitkrit has spent 18 years at Krungsri, Thailand’s fifth-largest financial group, including 13 years as CFO. On Jan. 1, 2026, she became its first chief finance and strategy officer.

—Joanne Rodrigues, Group CFO at Affin Bank, Malaysia (No. 99)
Banking veteran Joanne Rodrigues spent 18 years at CIMB and AmBank before joining Affin Bank as group CFO in June 2020. She previously worked in AmBank’s wholesale banking arm.

—Yik Sook Ling, CFO at Public Bank, Malaysia (No. 100)
Yik Sook Ling has been CFO of Public Bank, Malaysia’s third-largest bank by assets, since July 2012.

View the complete 2026 list here.

Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl.Estrada@fortune.com

Leaderboard

Brian LaRose resigned as CFO of Neighborhood Intelligence (Nasdaq: NXH), formerly Bed Bath & Beyond, effective Oct. 5 after roughly six months in the role. LaRose became CFO in April following the company’s acquisition of The Container Store, where he previously served as finance chief. The company did not disclose a reason for his resignation in its SEC filing. Paul Kosturos, a managing director at Alvarez & Marsal, was appointed interim CFO effective Oct. 5. He brings more than 30 years of finance and accounting experience and joins as the company integrates its businesses and cuts costs.

Stephen Cumming was appointed senior vice president and CFO of Penguin Solutions (Nasdaq: PENG), an AI infrastructure and memory solutions company, effective Oct. 6. Cumming most recently served as CFO of Edgio. Previously, he was CFO of Cambium Networks, where he led the company through its 2019 IPO, and held CFO roles at Kenandy and Atmel. His appointment comes as Penguin seeks to expand its AI data center business. Aaron Johnson, who had served as interim CFO since July, will return to his role as vice president of finance and accounting.

Big Deal

Salesforce’s CFO Priorities Report explores how finance leaders are taking on broader responsibilities as AI adoption and increasingly complex revenue models reshape their work. The survey of 865 finance executives across five countries found that nearly three-quarters said their roles had expanded over the past year, with managing AI use and expansion the leading driver.

Meanwhile, 65% manage multiple revenue models, and 71% say their companies sell through more channels than a year ago. Among respondents using AI, 90% reported positive returns on investment; more than 90% of those using AI agents reported benefits in time savings, productivity, cost savings, and forecast accuracy. Still, adoption faces hurdles: 46% cited security as a top barrier to expanding AI use, while 42% cited governance concerns and 42% cited integration with existing systems.

Going deeper

An Anthropic report finds that robots are already capable of performing 74% of physical work tasks in the U.S. But that doesn’t mean most of those jobs are about to disappear.

The bigger constraint today is economics: robots are currently cost-competitive with human labor for just 0.3% of work, and most still struggle in unpredictable, real-world environments. The jobs most exposed to robotics tend to be physical, repetitive, and structured, including driving, warehousing, packing, and material handling. By contrast, work requiring dexterity, hands-on care, and interpersonal interaction, such as nursing, repair, and many personal-service jobs, remains much harder to automate.

The report’s bigger takeaway is that robots expand the potential impact of AI well beyond the kinds of computer-based work affected by large language models. Taken together, robots and LLMs could theoretically affect around 80% of U.S. job tasks, according to the report. 

But the path from technical capability to widespread adoption will depend heavily on falling robot costs, improvements in physical capabilities, regulation, and whether people actually want robots doing certain kinds of work.

Overheard

“I put health as the foundation. Why? Because I think it’s very difficult to feel emotionally good with yourself if physically you’re not at your best.”

—Mikel Arteta, manager of English Premier League team Arsenal, told Fortune in an interview.