Forbes Asia today announced its annual Heroes of Philanthropy list, highlighting some of the region’s noteworthy givers. This year’s list includes two Malaysians — Top Glove Corp Bhd executive chairman and founder Tan Sri Lim Wee Chai (left), and Hai-O Enterprise Bhd executive chairman Tan Kai Hee. (File pix)

KUALA LUMPUR: Forbes Asia today announced its annual Heroes of Philanthropy list, highlighting some of the region’s noteworthy givers.

It honours 40 philanthropists from 14 countries across Asia Pacific.

This year’s list includes two Malaysians — Top Glove Corp Bhd executive chairman and founder Tan Sri Lim Wee Chai, and Hai-O Enterprise Bhd executive chairman Tan Kai Hee.

Lim, 59, and his wife Tong Siew Bee, started the Top Glove Foundation in 2009 with an initial US$300,000.

“Since then, the foundation has donated roughly US$5 million to various causes, with a focus on education. Recent beneficiaries include several Chinese-medium schools in Malaysia as well as Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, which received US$70,000 in 2015 to create a chair for the Top Glove Professor of Chemistry,” the Forbes Asia article said.

Tan, meanwhile, at his 80th-birthday dinner party in January, announced he was putting US$22 million of his shares in Hai-O — the Chinese traditional-medicine company he started in 1975 — into a trust, with stock gains and dividends to be donated to cultural, social, environmental and educational charities.

He also pledged more than US$500,000 to 38 entities, including the Federation of Chinese Associations Malaysia and the Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies.

“Over the previous nine years he had donated some US$5 million; beneficiaries included victims of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, dozens of Chinese-medium schools around Malaysia, and Yayasan Usman Awang, a foundation dedicated to the memory of the late National Laureate that aims to promote unity in multiracial Malaysia,” the article added.

The full list can be found in the July issue of Forbes Asia, which features former Chinese basketball superstar Yao Ming on the cover.

Through his Yao Foundation, which has an annual budget of around US$2.5 million, Yao equips and trains students in sports at schools in remote areas of China with no physical education programmes.