Lai See | Sincere shares soar following chairman's death

Shares in department store Sincere were unusually active yesterday, soaring about 40 per cent to 81 HK cents before falling back to 70 HK cents at the close, up 27 per cent. This was presumably a response to Sincere's announcement on Tuesday of the death on Sunday of chairman Walter Ma King-wah, aged 84. The company's statement said his cousin, Philip Ma King-huen, the chief executive and deputy chairman, had been named chairman and would remain as chief executive.

Walter Ma was not ungenerous to himself, receiving HK$11.6 million (HK$9.7 million after tax) last year, down from HK$14.7 million in the previous year. Philip Ma received HK$11 million last year and HK$15 million the year before. John Fu Yiu-cheong, an executive director and the chief financial officer, but not a member of the Ma family, received a significantly lower but more reasonable salary of HK$2.2 million.

There is another possible reason for the rise in Sincere's shares. The value of the firm's stock gained by HK$86.1 million yesterday, or about nine times the annual after-tax cost of the late chairman. This, we are told, is very roughly the net present value of not having to pay Walter Ma any longer. Who says markets are not efficient?

Wealth management is one of the "strongest" areas of growth for banks and others involved in the business. Hence the plethora of surveys as to where the world's richest live and how many millionaires and billionaires there are. The latest report on this subject to cross our desk comes from UBS and Wealth-X, which greets us with the headline "Global billionaire population reaches a record 2,325 with the addition of 155 new billionaires in 2014".