THE BATTLE for Asia’s biggest casino business is threatening to tear apart the empire of Stanley Ho, as the man called the King of Macau says his family has divided up the gambling enterprise he created without his consent.
There are shades of Shakespeare's King Learin the way the 89-year-old Mr Ho – a legend in the former Portuguese enclave and supposedly part Irish – finds himself at odds with his children as he fights to keep control of casino operator Sociedade de Jogos de Macau Holdings (SJM), which he has built over 50 years.
The patriarch has had four wives, with whom he had 17 children. He prides himself on having “many allies and few friends”, but may discover that the threat to his empire could lie closer to home.
The controversy began after SJM told the Hong Kong stock exchange on Monday that Mr Ho had transferred to family members all but 100 shares of his roughly 32 per cent stake in a company, STDM, that owns more than half of the casino operator.
Mr Ho’s lawyers said he “discovered much to his horror” that his 100 per cent ownership of Lanceford, which holds the 32 per cent stake in SJM’s parent company, had been diluted after new shares were issued – reducing his share to 1 per cent, the South China Morning Post reported.
Half of the shares in Lanceford were then transferred to a company owned by Mr Ho’s third wife, Ina Chan, and the other half to another company owned equally by his five children by his second wife, Lucina Laam – Pansy, Daisy, Maisy, Josie and Lawrence.
Mr Ho has instructed his lawyers to take action against his family, accusing relatives of "fraudulently misappropriating" his shares. The way the assets were transferred went against his wishes to divide them equally among his 16 surviving children, his lawyer, Gordon Oldham, told the South China Morning Post.
“What really upsets him is that he’s not even dead yet, but in the twilight of his life his second and third families appear to be squabbling and pinching it for themselves,” Mr OIdham told the paper. “There’s no doubt that he has all his faculties.”
The family denies seizing Mr Ho’s shares, saying the billionaire approved the transfer of his holdings in STDM.
There is a lot at stake. SJM is Asia’s largest casino operator, running 20 casinos in the world’s biggest gambling market. Macau is the only place in China where gambling is legal.
Mr Ho was ranked Hong Kong’s 13th richest man, with a net worth of €2.28 billion, by Forbes magazine earlier this month.