Antique vase snatched in raid on shipping magnate's home

Shipping magnate Antony Marden became the latest victim in a string of high-profile break-ins when his daughter woke to find a burglar in her room yesterday.

An antique vase worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and US$300 and HK$500 in cash were taken in the raid at the luxury three-storey house on Middle Gap Road, The Peak, police said.

The break-in was discovered at about 5am when Marden's 26-year-old daughter, Anne, was woken by noise and saw a man ransacking her first-floor bedroom, according to police.

"She yelled at him and he ran from the bedroom," a police officer said. He then dashed into the first-floor kitchen and climbed out of a window, clambering down drainpipes and running up a hill behind the house.

Police were called but no arrests made. Officers were last night hunting a 1.7-metre-tall Chinese man in connection with the case.

Antony Marden was in the second-floor master bedroom at the time. His family is understood to have two foreign domestic helpers and a chauffeur who doubles as a security guard.