Sally Aw


Aw Sian also known as Sally Aw, OBE, DStJ, JP, is a Hong Kong businesswoman and daughter of the Burmese-Hakka Chinese entrepreneur and newspaper proprietor Aw Boon-haw. Sally Aw was nicknamed Tiger Balm Lady as well as Chinese Howard Hughes.
Aw Boon-haw's third son Aw Hoe was killed in a plane crash in 1951 and after his own death in 1954, Aw Sian, then 22, inherited the newspaper empire of Hong Kong, while other relatives inherited the empire in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
Aw was known foremost as a media mogul, proprietor of the English language business newspaper The Standard and the Chinese language news group Sing Tao Holdings, including Sing Tao Daily and Sing Tao Wan Pao, founded by her father in 1938, as well as she founded in 1963 and Tin Tin Daily News she owned via Sing Tao Holdings' listed subsidiary
Due to the Asian financial crisis and a corruption case in which she was named co-conspirator in 1998, Aw was forced to sell her media interests.
In 1997, Aw was appointed to be a delegate to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Industry recognition

In 1988, she won the Carr Van Anda Award from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. The award, named after the former managing editor of the New York Times, is awarded yearly for journalism contributions. Aw was given the award for building Sing Tao into an international Chinese-language newspaper.