The dictionary definition of the word 'tycoon', which reads 'a person who is successful in business and so has become rich and powerful', does not even begin to describe the control and influence Hong Kong's greatest taipans have wielded over the years.
No one knows this better than Robert Wang Wei-han, whose years working with the city's most successful people put him on the road to riches, albeit with some bumps along the way. Wang was born in Ningbo and soon afterwards his parents moved to Shanghai. When he was five, his family fled Shanghai amid the Chinese civil war and started a new life in Hong Kong. They had nothing.
As far back as he can remember, though, Wang was determined to be a success. In the early 1970s, as a qualified solicitor, he founded Robert W. H. Wang & Co, which grew into the city's fifth-largest law firm. As the handover of Hong Kong approached, and with no one quite sure what the end of British rule would bring, Wang came up with a plan to safeguard the fortunes of Hong Kong's richest tycoons by convincing Singapore to take them in so they could run their businesses from there.
He spent his time dealing one on one with the most powerful businessmen and politicians in the region, including Li Ka-shing, Lee Shau-kee, Cheng Yu-tung and Run Run Shaw. However, after Wang unwittingly offended certain power brokers, the tycoons cut him adrift. He has now written a book detailing his life, called Walking the Tycoons' Rope. It offers a rare look into the world of Hong Kong's property tycoons and how ruthless they can be.
'Let's just say you have to be extremely careful,' Wang said. 'You have to be mutually useful to each other or it won't work. They don't knock on your door for no reason, although I did become close with Cheng and Shaw. They taught me a lot.'
He believes the power that Hong Kong tycoons have is now on the wane, and that the watershed was the last chief executive election.