May be our treasure or the price we have to pay ...

Sun Hung Kai Properties kicked off the marketing campaign for its Arch project with the classic track She by Charles Aznavour.

The Cantonese for 'the Arch' - hoi-suen moon - translates into a woman's name followed by a door.

Getting inside Hoi-suen's walls in West Kowloon, however, will be expensive.

Executive director Victor Lui Ting yesterday suggested that penthouse suites could fetch at least $31,000 per square foot, easily a record for a Hong Kong high-rise.

Yesterday, Lai See was among a journalist pack to get a look at the IFC Two show flat, which was said to cost an average of $1 million a day in marketing and rental costs.

The salubrious interior comes with a 200-square-foot balcony, sporting a long dining table and dinner service said to be worth $600,000. Alas, even the smallest units - designed at 558 square feet but priced at more than $10,000 a square foot - are outside our budget.

That does not seem to be putting off buyers for what the hype merchants at Sun Hung Kai are dubbing the hottest project of the year.

'If we put up a batch of small sea-view units, they could all be sold in 24 hours,' claimed Mr Lui.

DEVELOPING LUCK WITH NUMBERS

Don't tell the Planning Department, but Sun Hung Kai Properties' planned mega-tower in Kowloon is getting bigger.

Previously, the Union Square project at Kowloon Station was claimed to be 110 storeys, but Mr Lui yesterday revealed that it had mysteriously increased to a jaw-dropping 138-floor development. Fortunately, government valuers need not worry that the developer is pulling a fast one with the plot ratio.

The developer has simply removed all unlucky 'fours' and 'fives'.

SELLING FLAT OUT HAS ITS REWARDS

Property agency Midland Realty announced this week a special one-month bonus for its 109 branches - almost half of its total 224 branches - that achieved a seven-digit commission fee. That was on top of an across-the-board cash bonus of $2,000 as the firm headed for a record month.

The Redhill Peninsula and Peak branches are believed to be the top performers, with commission fees topping $5 million and $4 million, respectively.

With those figures, don't be surprised to see your friends give up their serious jobs to become sales agents. It's as if five years of deflation never happened.

BUNDLED PACKAGE OFFERS VALUE

How much is a deputy chairman title worth? China Netcom Group yesterday promoted its chief executive Tian Suning to the posts of vice-chairman and chief executive.

Having been retitled, Dr Tian is now entitled to a $3 million basic salary, a non-disclosed performance-based bonus plus discretionary share options. This is on top of his existing $300,000 director and corporate governance committee fees and stacks of stock options. By contrast, the company's bigger rival China Telecom has no executives earning more than $1 million. Makes you wonder who has the most to gain from a grand consolidation of the country's telecommunications sector.

TALE OF TWO BOSSES IN LI EMPIRE

While we're on the subject of salaries, who deserves more - a 35-year veteran of a company that earned $6.28 billion last year, or a four-year media executive whose business recorded only its second annual profit? The comparison between the bosses of two Li Ka-shing companies throws up an interesting answer.

His main man at media flagship Tom Group, Wang Sing, earned $23.73 million last year as the company recorded gains of $859.82 million. Over at Hongkong Electric, group managing director Tso Kai-sum, who joined the group in the 1960s, took home $13.28 million, even though the utility's profits were seven times larger.

The same held true for both companies' financial wizards, with Tom's chief financial officer, Tommei Tong Mei-kuen, earning $11.6 million compared to finance director Andrew Hunter's $7.93 million at Hongkong Electric.

INSURANCE MAN REDUCES HIS COVER

The chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Insurers, Chan Kin-por, is moving on to greener pastures.

The media friendly executive has quit his job of more than 10 years as assistant general manager and head of insurance at Hang Seng Bank. However, he will stay as head of the industry association until the end of next month when his term expires.