Mico Chung, the upstart Hong Kong developer who aims to join the ‘big boys’ league
Once touted as ‘Richard Li’s right-hand man’, does one of Hong Kong’s savviest deal makers have what it takes to found a new property empire to rival that of Henderson or New World?
Hong Kong’s property market is so dominated by the local elite property developers – the so-called big boys – that it’s often thought these developers will never be usurped from their positions of power, or that their ranks will ever change.
But don’t say that to Mico Chung Cho-yee, chairman of Capital Strategic Investments (CSI), an upstart property developer keenly intent on joining the ranks of those big boys. His company, which thus far has focused on redeveloping commercial properties and more lately on luxury homes, is working its way up the ladder.
Revenues for CSI have steadily climbed since Chung took over the company, then just a corporate shell, in 2004. In 2005, CSI recorded revenues of HK$368 million (US$46.9 million at current rates), with net profit attributable to shareholders of HK$71 million. In 2017, it was HK$1.86 billion in revenues, with HK$1.35 billion profit to shareholders. In 2012, a banner year for CSI, revenues reached HK$3.2 billion, with profit at HK$1.7 billion. That’s still a fraction of big boy numbers: in 2017, New World Development posted revenues of HK$56 billion, with profit attributable to shareholders of HK$7.6 billion.
But such figures don’t deter Chung, who has a step-by-step vision to get to the top tier of Hong Kong’s property developers.
Looking up to his father
Chung’s family was not particularly well off; there were no maids or nannies, and young Mico Chung would often find himself visiting properties and construction sites with his father. Property prices famously collapsed after the 1967 riots, and it was then that Chung’s father made his move into property.