Property guru Davies dead at 56

David Davies, who made his name when he brokered the sale of Hongkong Land's residential portfolio to Bond Corporation, died of cancer yesterday. He was 56.

Davies, founder of property giant First Pacific Davies Savills, returned to Britain late last year after he was diagnosed with advanced cancer of the pancreas. His wife Alison Henry and the eldest of his four children were at his bedside at a London hospital when he died. The couple have twin three-year-old daughters and had another baby girl last year. Davies also had a son, Michael, 21, from a previous marriage.

Davies grew up in Shropshire, England, and joined a civil engineering company on leaving school, coming to Hong Kong in 1971. He started his own company a decade later and it grew rapidly as he negotiated some of Hong Kong's largest property deals. His name was made when in 1986 he put together the $1.4 billion purchase of Hong Kong Land's residential portfolio for Bond Corporation, at the time the largest single private enterprise property deal in Hong Kong history.

Through sales and acquisitions, his company First Pacific Davies became one of the biggest players in the Hong Kong real estate world. It went on to become the largest fully integrated property group in Asia. It is now called FPDSavills.