Sun Hung Kai Properties, the scandal-engulfed property developer, has more than 35,000 employees. But it appears that no one other than third-generation members of the founder's family can be relied upon to extricate SHKP from the problems created by the second-generation family members.
It remains to be seen whether bribery charges will be upheld against the two Kwok brothers who run the company. But they have now appointed their youngish sons as alternate directors and done so with the claim that this will ensure the company's future.
SHKP's founder passed control of his company to his three sons in 1990. By 2008, they had fallen out. The eldest son, Walter Kwok Ping-sheung, was ejected from the management. Events suggest that family management is not always the best recipe for running Hong Kong's public companies.
The key word here is 'public'. It is really no one else's business who controls private corporations. But once the decision has been taken to solicit outside shareholders, companies need to justify their choice of management with criteria that goes beyond family association.
SHKP is hardly the only Hong Kong company to retain a rigid family-management model. Succession to junior family members, following the example of SHKP, has already occurred or will soon be happening for the sons of the founding families of the New World conglomerate, the Bank of East Asia, and Hopewell Holdings.
There is little doubt that the same practice will be followed at Li Ka-shing's Cheung Kong group, and indeed, every other major conglomerate where the founder's family retains control.
The process is not always smooth, as has been seen at the gambling and property empire of Stanley Ho Hung-sun, where family strife riotously spilled over into the public domain.