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Sandy Li

Rumours and musings from the night watchman
Matriarch Kwong celebrates
Happy birthday, Madam Kwong Siu-hing!
The chairman of Sun Hung Kai Properties   hosted a 30-table banquet last Tuesday at the Royal Garden Hotel -  one of the group's properties - to celebrate her first birthday  since she took up the chairmanship in May.
Ah Pak  reckons the menu befitted the occasion, featuring first-class abalone, shark's fin and a bird's nest  dessert, all of which  was said to cost the host HK$70,000 per table. Madam Kwong's (left) generosity was clearly not tempered by the  board's decision to cut her salary to just HK$120,000 from the HK$2.06 million paid  to her predecessor in the chair, Walter Kwok Ping-sheung.
If the numbers added up,  Madam Kwong  spent  171/2 times her salary on her birthday bash alone.
But then the guest list demanded a posh affair,  including as it did  VIPs such as the wife of Guangdong governor Huang Huahua, and Hong Kong's  third-wealthiest tycoon, Lee Shau-kee, and his family  at the head table.
Mr Lee,  known as 'Uncle Four', is  a non-executive director of SHKP.   With him were his two sons, Peter Lee Ka-kit and Martin Lee Ka-shing, who was there with his wife, the former model-actress Cathy Chui Chi-kay.
A notable absentee was Mr Kwok, Madam  Kwong's eldest son.
Leafing through SHKP's 2007-2008 annual report during some idle time while on watch, Ah Pak noticed that Madam Kwong had disclosed her age  as 79, which oddly is the same  as that of her younger brother, Kwong Chun, an executive director of the group.
Ah Pak wondered if Madam Kwong and her  brother were  twins or whether there was a mystery here that required a variation of the traditional  song: 'Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Madam Kwong, and just how old are you?'
When the going gets tough
It is a sad story but true. A managing director at a major investment bank is   labelled a 'high-risk client' by commercial lenders and is unable to get a car loan of just HK$500,000. No wonder some former analysts with investment banks  have opted to change their jobs and work for property developers.
One who did  is Lam Jim,  formerly at Morgan Stanley, who recently joined Greentown China Holdings as company secretary.  He has more than 10 years of experience in  auditing and investment banking.
Another former analyst  making the same career change is Trevor Cheung (above), the former head of research at DBS. In June,  he joined the then listing candidate Longfor Properties, a Chongqing  developer that aimed to raise at least US$1 billion in August in a Hong Kong initial public offering.   The IPO was  withdrawn because of poor market sentiment.
Star slips quietly out the door
More bad news is buffeting the international property consultancy industry. Eric Chan, deputy managing director at Savills' Beijing office since July last year, left this month.
Although no official announcement of his departure was made, Mr Chan's name was absent from the company's December in-house contact list. How the mighty  have fallen.  Just eight months ago Mr Chan was involved in  brokering a 2.19 billion yuan (HK$2.48 billion) sale of  the grade A office property Feng Sheng Building to China Pacific Insurance.
But in the company's latest phone book, his name is replaced  by that of Matt Brailsford, who was the former director of investment at Savills' Shanghai office.
Rival Colliers International is taking a different approach to  the economic crisis. Instead of retrenching staff,  it has announced an across-the-board pay cut of  10 per cent. Once target revenues are reached, full salaries will be restored.
Second chance in Shanghai
Government officials from several mainland cities recently visited Hong Kong to  resell sites  from buyers who failed to complete their deals after their credit dried up as a result of the  financial crisis.
One of the jewels back on the market was a prime commercial site at East Nanjing Road, Shanghai, that was returned by Nanjing Suning Development in early August.  Last year, it successfully bid 4.4 billion yuan,   a record price of 66,927 yuan per square metre, for the 13,709 square metre site.
Ah Pak understands that Walter Kwok, then the chairman of Sun Hung Kai Properties, was in charge of the group's bidding via a telephone link. It sent a representative to the Shanghai auction hall who kept Mr Kwok updated over the phone.  More than 100 bids drove the price steadily upwards.
Mr Kwok was narrowly defeated by the winner when he withdrew  after a final bid of 4.2 billion yuan, and the site eventually went for 4.4 billion to Nanjing Suning.  Now SHKP gets a second bite at the cherry.



Ah Pak