How did 10 investors divvy up a 73-storey office tower? They picked ping pong balls from a hat
With the ink barely dry on the completion of the world’s most expensive real estate deal, some buyers are already putting their shares of the spoil on the market for a premium
This story received the "Journalist of the Year" award in the Investment category of State Street's 2018 Asia-Pacific Institutional Press Awards, which received more than 200 entries for commendations in nine categories
On a sunny afternoon last month, a group of very wealthy men filed into the 28th floor office of Hong Kong’s richest woman at the One International Finance Centre skyscraper overlooking the city’s famed Victoria Harbour.
Among them were Shimao Property Holdings’ founder Hui Wing Mau, the operator of Hong Kong’s biggest fleet of mini buses Ma Ah Mok, and two men who made their fortunes from producing cassette tapes and compact discs.
They had come to the boardroom of Kingston Financial Group’s co-founder Pollyanna Chu Lee Yuet-wah for an unusual ritual: they would pick ping pong balls painted with numbers out of a hat, to decide who among the 10 of them would get the first pick to divvy up the 73 storeys at The Center, the city’s fifth-tallest building.
Six months earlier in November, several members of the group had agreed to pay HK$40.2 billion (US$5.2 billion) to buy The Center from tycoon Li Ka-shing, in a purchase that would top the scales as the world’s most expensive real estate transaction.
It was a sale that had taken more than two years to close. Li’s CK Asset Holdings had initially balked at a lower, HK$35 billion offer, and he only wanted to deal with a single buyer. A sale was only possible after the price was raised by 15 per cent, and the buyers used a consortium called the C.H.M.T Peaceful Development as the signing buyer.