Winners of 14th Asia Business Leaders Awards

CNBC recognized a host of Asia's most prominent business names at this year's 14th Asia Business Leaders Awards in Bangkok.

A total of 45 business leaders from 10 countries competed for six awards: Asia Business Leader of the Year , Lifetime Achievement, Asia Innovator of the Year, Asia Talent Management, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Thailand Business Leader.

India led the pool of 45 shortlisted candidates with nine individuals in the running, followed by Japan (seven candidates), Thailand (six candidates), Singapore and Indonesia (five candidates each), Malaysia (four candidates), the Philippines (three candidates), Hong Kong and Korea (two candidates each) and mainland China and Taiwan (one candidate each).

Click ahead to see this year's winners.

—By Nyshka Chandran

Posted on 29 October 2015

Under Nakanishi's leadership and emphasis on innovation, globalization, and transformation, Hitachi achieved a V-shaped turnaround after years of losses.

He has successfully steered the company to deliver answers to challenges faced by society through its Social Innovation Business which includes power & infrastructure systems, construction machinery, automotive systems, healthcare and others.

Starting with a single Uniqlo store in Hiroshima in 1984, Yanai has built the Fast Retailing business to more than 2,800 stores worldwide today, including over 1,600 Uniqlo stores.

With the corporate statement 'Changing clothes. Changing conventional wisdom. Change the world,' Fast Retailing is dedicated to creating great clothing with new and unique value to enrich the lives of people everywhere.

Tan has innovatively established IHH as the second largest premium healthcare group in the world by market capitalization.

Tan believes in incremental innovation – taking small steps – as he believes that they are in the people's health business and not in a technology business. He has employed an innovation model known as SIP (i.e. Service, Integration and Process Innovation) because like taking water, he believes that successful innovation should be developed and adopted in small steps.

Go was personally involved in setting up the company's Management Trainee Program, which has successfully developed from a 10 candidate program to a program adopted by the whole group.

Given the broad scope of JG Summit's businesses, the company cross posts its managers to different business units or assigns them in different countries to make sure that they are given challenging assignments to help them grow into better leaders. Moreover, Go spends extensive time with HR on how to recruit, train, retain and keep their key managers enthusiastic about their work.

The Malaysian businessman is being recognized for his outstanding contributions to the arts, education, environment and community development.

Alias is committed to reducing the bank's carbon footprint through energy efficiency, water management and waste reduction initiatives by dedicating resources towards these goals. Finally, through its partnership with WWF-Malaysia and the relevant governmental and regulatory agencies, the bank is looking to develop a long-term program in the area of tiger conservation in Malaysia.

Thanks to Tanyawong's vision, the bank's comprehensive network has grown country-wide with 1,207 branches, making it the largest number in the national banking industry.

Within 5 months from the time Tanyawong took over the bank, he launched the "KTB Transformation" project in April 2013 with the objective of enhancing the bank's capabilities in the areas of front office operations, credit approval, risk management and most importantly, human resources. Since then, KTB has grown to be number one in term of assets, loans, and deposits.