As the West is occupied, HK brokers protest about shorter lunch hours
It's nice to know that we haven't lost our sense of priorities in Hong Kong. Elsewhere, ports and business centres are being occupied, and the financial community is keeping its head down for fear of ending up hanging from a lamp post. Not in Hong Kong, where the loudest protests we heard recently came from brokers complaining about the shorter lunch hours forced on them by the stock exchange, which expects them to keep body and soul together over a one-hour lunch.
Larry Yung does know money
Larry Yung Chi-kin, who resigned as chairman of Citic Pacific in April 2009, just after police raided its Hong Kong offices, has reportedly sold Birch Grove House, once the home of former British prime minister Harold Macmillan, in West Sussex. southern England. It went for an estimated ?25 million (HK$311 million), according to British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. The buyer was billionaire racehorse owner Jim Hay and his wife, Fitri. Yung didn't stint himself, spending ?10 million on a private golf course, although he was rumoured to have played only six times. On each occasion, he and his guests were followed by a refreshment cart with smoked salmon and a full drinks bar. It's a pity he didn't pay so much attention to his foreign exchange deals, or he'd probably still be chairman of Citic Pacific, and the company would be US$1.9 billion better off.
No tai-tais with mai-tais at the AWA
We don't normally do bazaars, but having been to the one organised by the American Women's Association of Hong Kong yesterday we have been converted. A guided tour of the AWA's 17th annual Charity Bazaar by the association's president, Susan Madon, at the Happy Valley Racecourse took us through three floors of truly high-quality stalls with wine, food, clothing, jewellery, carpets, flowers and more. A lot of these businesses are online, so it was an interesting shop window. This year's bazaar is expecting to raise about HK$500,000, compared with HK$400,000 last year, all of which goes to charity. The AWA targets small or new charities that don't get funding from the government or the Community Chest and tends to favour women and girls and programmes and projects addressing new social challenges facing Hong Kong residents. Madon's vision is to have the AWA - which has 950 members drawn from 32 nationalities - seen in Hong Kong not as 'tai-tais with mai-tais, but as women of vision and excellence who make a difference to their community whether they are here for six months or 40 years'.