Today the Financial Times won seven awards at the 2007 SOPA Awards for Editorial Excellence. The awards, organised by the Society of Publishers in Asia, were given out at the presentation dinner at the JW Marriott Hotel.

The Financial Times won four first prizes including the Scoop of the Year award, won by Tom Mitchell, Sundeep Tucker and Justine Lau, for their expose of how the Chinese government intervened to prevent the sale of Hong Kong’s leading telecommunications group to foreign buyers.

The Financial Times also won first prizes for opinion writing and magazine front cover design.FTChinese.com, the newspaper’s Chinese language website, won first prize in the explanatory reporting category for its coverage of China’s emerging middle class.

The three runner-up prizes were for a scoop on Thai premier’s Thaksin Shinawatra’s sale of the country’s leading telecommunications group to Singapore’s Temasek; a series of features on Japan’s resurgence; and for magazine design.

Robin Kwong, an FT reporter based in Hong Kong, also won top prize for an environmental series written while working for the South China Morning Post.

Further information about the awards can be found at: http://www.sopasia.com/

For further information, please contact:

Jo Crosby, Financial Times, 020 7873 3811 or jo.crosby@ft.com

Azmar Sukandar, Financial Times, (852) 2905 55 19 or azmar.sukandar@ft.com