Developer faces murky future

This has not been a good year for Hong Kong property tycoon Joseph Lau Luen-hung.

As chairman of developer Chinese Estates, he and Hong Kong businessman Steven Lo Kit-sing were charged in May with offering a HK$20 million bribe in 2006 to a now-disgraced Macau official to secure five plots of land for a luxury residential development named La Scala in the former Portuguese enclave. Lau and Lo are set to be tried early next year on charges of bribery and money laundering. Both have denied any wrongdoing.

Chinese Estates, one of Hong Kong's oldest developers, was established by the late tycoon Fung Ping-shan. Lau took control of the Hong Kong-listed company in 1986 when he acquired a 43 per cent stake in the developer through his listed ceiling fan maker Evergo.

Lau then proceeded to turn the developer into more of an investment company. But at the end of 2002, Chinese Estates re-entered the local real estate market by buying the well-known Tung Ying Building in Tsim Sha Tsui for HK$1.16 billion. Lau subsequently redeveloped the site into a high-profile shopping complex called The One in 2010.

In the meantime, Lau, who now controls 75 per cent of Chinese Estates and seldom holds press conferences for his business endeavours, started to meet with dozens of reporters to strengthen media relations ahead of a plan to launch more than 2,500 flats in Hong Kong worth up to HK$6 billion in 2003 and 2004.

The firm posted a profit in 2003, following three years of losses that were partly caused by a downturn in the property market, and it has stayed in the black in recent years.