Family squabbles over fortune as casino king nears the end

A family feud involving the 'Casino King of Macau' could now be coming to an end, marking the closure of a row which has transfixed Hong Kong.

It is a family feud that has transfixed the whole territory of Hong Kong.

Stanley Ho, the ailing 89-year-old Hong Kong billionaire known as the casino king of Macau for his role in transforming the former Portuguese colony from a sleepy backwater into the world's biggest gambling destination, has found himself fighting with his children as he tries to keep control of the gaming firm Sociedade de Jogos de Macau Holdings (SJM), which he built up over five decades.

Last month, Mr Ho came to an agreement that seemingly ended this particular chapter of the feud.

Under the terms of the deal, the managing director Angela Leong, the mother of Mr Ho's five youngest children, gets 6 per cent of SJM's parent Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau(STDM).

Mr Ho's other three families, including his daughter Pansy Ho, hold 25.5 per cent interest in the operation. Ms Ho is 50-50 partners with MGM Resorts International in the MGM Grand Macau.

The agreement leaves Mr Ho with a stake of less than 1 per cent in the operation. The news gave a boost to SJM shares, which hit a two-month high at one point in Hong Kong trading, after they lost serious ground during the uncertainty over the succession saga.

There is plenty at stake. Mr Ho is a formidable figure in Macau, the only place in China where gambling is legal, and where gaming revenue is four times that of the Las Vegas Strip. He has been ranked Hong Kong's 13th-richest man, with a net worth of Dh8.37 billion (US$2.27bn), by Forbes magazine.

Mr Ho started making his fortune smuggling goods between China and Macau during the Second World War. His company owns a third of Macau's international airport and holds a stake in Air Macau. Shun Tak Holdings, another of his ventures, dominates the ferry and helicopter services that link the city to Hong Kong as well as operating the bus links to mainland China.

"No guarantees can ever be made when it comes to family disputes, but hopefully the family will work together … there is always the chance that different management styles and strategies will be disputed among shareholders of any publicly traded company," Jonathan Galaviz, the managing director of the consulting firm Galaviz & Company, told the Macau Daily Times.

It is the kind of internecine feud that pops up all the time in Hong Kong and Macau, where the biggest companies are often family businesses with complicated structures.

Mr Ho's first wife, Li Wan Hua, died in 2004 at the age of 80. It is unclear whether his other three wives, Lucina Laam, Ina Chan and fourth wife Ms Leong, were formally married to him, but they are generally referred to as his spouses.

The possibility of a major row over Mr Ho's fortune was always on the cards. With four wives and 17 children, there were always going to be potential challengers to his crown.

While he prides himself on having "many allies and few friends", in the end he discovered the threat to his empire lay much closer to home.

He built his fortune over five decades after Macau's colonial government granted him and his partners a gaming monopoly in 1962. The monopoly was not renewed after 2001 and Macau granted licences to hotel resort rivals including Sheldon Adelson's Las Vegas Sands and Steve Wynn's Wynn Resorts.

The patriarch reportedly had brain surgery after a fall in 2009 and spent seven months in hospital. In January, Mr Ho made a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that he had given his stake to the families of his second and third wives.

This led to a flurry of conflicting claims, and lawsuits by different family factions followed.

Suddenly, he was up against his own children.

At one point, a frail Mr Ho appeared on television in his wheelchair to say the dispute was resolved, only for his lawyer to later say he had been coerced into making the comments. There are several indications that despite the current deal, the family feud may only be beginning.

Mr Ho has had family problems before, having long been embroiled in a lawsuit with his sister Winnie over control of his assets. For now, the row over Mr Ho's inheritance has gone to ground. But a family of this profile is rarely out of the headlines for long, and many are now waiting to see what happens when he dies.

Ms Leong's stake appears to have come at the expense of a reduced stake in STDM for his third wife Ms Chan, and his second wife Ms Laam's five children. When Mr Ho goes, the recent agreement is sure to come up for fresh, and possibly bitter, scrutiny.