Macau gambling tycoon Stanley Ho (何鴻燊) is suing relatives he has accused of trying to steal his vast casino empire, the latest twist after a bizarre TV appearance on Wednesday that seemed to end the nasty family feud.
Within hours of appearing on a local TV station to say the spat had been resolved, Ho filed a lawsuit in Hong Kong’s High Court. The suit seeks an injunction to stop relatives from claiming ownership over his Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau SA (SJM) holdings, the centerpiece of Ho’s US$3.1 billion fortune.
The claim, which appears to be signed by Ho, also seeks unspecified damages against four of the 11 defendants, including three of his children — two of whom, Pansy (何超瓊) and Lawrence Ho (何猷龍), run rival gambling concessions in Macau.
It alleges the group “improperly and/or illegally” moved to change the share structure at a holding company that ultimately controls Ho’s flagship firm, whose interests including 17 Macau casinos and several hotels.
Gordon Oldham, a lawyer acting for Ho, yesterday insisted Ho had been coerced into reconciling with family members on live TV on Wednesday, with the wheelchair-bound Ho struggling to read a giant cue card.
“I asked him for an explanation about his earlier appearance on TV,” Oldham told Hong Kong broadcaster Cable News.
“He said that he felt very pressurized by his family to read out that statement. He wasn’t at all happy in doing so,” Oldham said.
Oldham could not be immediately reached to comment further.
Ho has a complicated family tree with 17 children born to four women whom he refers to as his wives.
Oldham has said that Ho was legally married only to the first, Clementina Leitao (黎婉華), who died in 2004, and that the rest were mistresses. The South China Morning Post reported that Ho also married his second wife, Lucina Laam King-ying (藍瓊纓), before Hong Kong’s polygamy laws changed in the early 1970s.
Nam is a defendant in the lawsuit along with Ho’s third “wife,” Ina Chan Un-chan (陳婉珍).
The feud shone a spotlight on apparent fissures among Ho’s myriad offspring, with the disputed share transfer giving the bulk of his fortune to his second and third families.
On Wednesday, Stanley and Clementina’s daughter Angela Ho Chiu-yin (何超賢) questioned whether her father really wanted to cut her and her two living siblings out of their inheritance.
“My father has always prided himself on being a fair, just and honest person and I cannot believe that may father would leave my mother’s family with nothing at all,” she said in a statement.
She said efforts to contact a trio of daughters from her father’s second and third families had failed, saying “they have ignored me.”
Angela Ho, who was expected to hold a press conference in Macau later yesterday, also said her mother’s connections were key to her father winning a gambling monopoly on Macau casinos starting from the 1960s until 2002.
Macau has boomed with about US$23.5 billion in gaming revenue last year — four times as much as the Las Vegas Strip.
Stanley Ho, once a keen ballroom dancer known for his playboy lifestyle, was hospitalized in mid-2009 for unspecified reasons.
Reports said he fell at home and suffered a brain injury, stoking questions about the future of his gambling empire. He has rarely been seen in public since falling ill, but the uncertainty appeared to have been settled on Monday when, in a file to Hong Kong’s stock exchange, his main company said he had offloaded the lion’s share of his Macau casino firm to relatives.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last