Millionaires get helping hand in love stakes

It's tough to be a millionaire. With no time to waste and a checklist of potential mates as long as a stretch limo, some high-net-worth individuals are now outsourcing the task of finding love to a professional matchmaker.

'They're quite good-looking, aren't they,' says Rachael Chan Ying-lam, founder of HK Speed Dating, as she shows off pictures of people she has set up on dinner dates over the past year.

The service is inspired by Patti Stanger's reality TV show The Millionaire Matchmaker. Chan added the millionaire category to her company's dinner dates in August, and 40 people have signed on for the soir?es.

'This one works for a property developer and he makes over a million a year,' Chan says. In the picture is a clean-cut Chinese man in his 30s with his arm around a young Chinese woman. Chan declines to provide his name, saying he'd rather remain anonymous, like many of her clients.

The next dinner will be at the Ritz-Carlton on Saturday, with an architect, CEO, banker, perfume shop owner, doctor and pianist on the guest list. 'People using dating services are not all fat, bald and ugly anymore,' says Chan of airbrushed glamour shots of female participants.

Millionaires are on the rise in Hong Kong, with the number making up 33 per cent of high-net-worth individuals in Asia last year, according to the 2011 World Wealth Report by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management.