Amazing Kwoks a hard act to follow

THE Kwok brothers, Walter, Thomas and Raymond - admired about town as great strategists - appear to have done it again.

Defying gravity, the Sun Hung Kai trio appear to have made their profits and margins rise in a falling sales market.

Who else could make interim profits go up 16 per cent on less than half the property sales turnover of the previous year, you may ask.

Admirers may hail them as great magicians to have pulled off such a feat in a down market.

But because of the strange nature of booking profits in the property sector, you could argue Sun Hung Kai was heading for good results at interim stage, irrespective of whether the Government stepped in to cool prices and speculation in the residential property market last March.

The company's biggest single profit contribution came from the booking of big profits from pre-sales of luxury apartments at Villa Athena in Sha Tin.

The units were pre-sold at the peak of the market during the last financial year, but because of traditional accountancy practices, the profits were not booked until the first half of the current financial year when the project was completed and final payments from buyers banked.