He met Leong, a dancer and former ballroom dancing instructor, through his love of the tango and the cha-cha, Ho fathered children with two other women, Ina Chan and Angela Leong, whom he also referred to as his “wives.” Ho reportedly met Chan, a nurse, when she was hired to care for Leitao, who died in 2004.
About the same time, Ho married Lucina Laam under a Qing dynasty code allowing men to take multiple wives that Hong Kong outlawed in 1971. In 1948, Ho married Clementina Leitao, daughter of a prominent lawyer in Macao with ties to Portugal and to Macao high society, connections that may have helped him win the casino monopoly in 1962. I went there with 10 dollars in my pocket and became a millionaire before the age of 20,” Ho said. “I had to throw away my uniform and run to Macao as a refugee,” Ho said in the 2001 interview.ĭuring the war, Ho said he ran nighttime smuggling and trading trips up the Pearl River Delta, on one occasion surviving a pirate attack.Įventually, he secured a four-decade monopoly on casinos in Macao, using that home advantage to build an empire that still dominated the industry for years after the local gaming market opened to foreign companies in 2002. He boarded a boat for neutral Macao, joining refugees from mainland China in the dying fishing port. Fluent in English and Chinese, he was working as a telephone operator for British forces when the colony fell to Japan. Ho's studies at Hong Kong University were interrupted by World War II.
When he was 13, his father abandoned the family after being wiped out by a stock market crash during the Great Depression. 25, 1921, into the Hotung family, one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest and most powerful. I don’t have the patience,” Ho told The Associated Press in a rare interview in 2001. Ho had stakes in businesses running everything from the ferries and helicopters connecting Hong Kong and Macao to department stores, hotels, Macao’s airport and its horse-racing tracks.īut he said he avoided the gambling floor. Released this month, it places Lui’s net worth at $21 billion behind Li’s $32 billion.Of mixed Chinese and European heritage, Ho fathered 17 children with four women, an extended family that engaged in high-profile squabbles over his legacy during his later years.
Macau’s gambling revenue jumped 18.6pc to a record $45 billion in 2013, official figures showed earlier in the month.Īccording to Forbes Magazine’s 2014 Hong Kong rich list, Lui is still behind Li, however. The only Chinese city where casino gambling is allowed. Galaxy, which saw its shares rise more than 100 per cent in 2013, is one of six firms licensed to operate casinos in Macau, the world’s biggest gaming hub, which was handed back to Beijing in 1999 and remains The 84-year-old made entered the Macau gambling market with Galaxy after it opened up in 2002, after a four-decade monopoly held by Hong Kong gambling mogul Stanley Ho ended. He made his first fortune after World War II when he imported construction equipment, left by US forces in Okinawa, to the city. Lui’s family fled war-torn China for Hong Kong in 1934 where he reportedly made money selling food on the streets of the former British colony at the age of 13. Lui, the head of Macau casino operator Galaxy Entertainment, saw his fortune rise $3.5 billion this month to $29.6 billion, about $100 million ahead of Li, whose fortune stood at $29.5 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on Thursday. HONG KONG: Macau gambling tycoon Lui Che-woo has replaced Hong Kong multi-billionaire Li Ka-shing as Asia’s richest man, according to Bloomberg on Friday.