Mr. Shangkong | Now Hong Kong becomes the place to put a few assets in the trolley
With potential buyers looking over some prominent businesses in the city, truly local ventures may end up as rare as a 'Made in Hong Kong' T-shirt
Hong Kong has long been known as a shopping paradise, in particular among fashion-conscious women. But lately it's more than just fashion that is on offer, as a growing number of billion-dollar family businesses have been put up for sale.
For some bankers, the asset sales have not come as a big surprise. Last year, when I talked to David Chin, the head of Asia investment banking business at UBS, he had already flagged the deals.
"In 10 years, Hong Kong will see first-generation [business] leaders or founders exit. The privatisation trend will apply to hundreds of privately held listed companies in this city," Chin said in an interview in November.
He's right. First, Hong Kong's richest man Li Ka-shing decided to put one of the city's most popular supermarket chains, ParknShop, up for sale.
And shortly after Li decided to sell ParknShop, the South China Morning Post learned from sources that another famous local retail chain in the city, Quality HealthCare, had been put up for sale by its family owners, Malvinder Mohan Singh and his brother Shivinder Mohan Singh, two of India's richest men.
The chain of clinics has been the first choice for many white-collar workers in the city seeking medical services.
Since then Chong Hing Bank, founded in 1948 and now one of only four major family-controlled banks in the city, has confirmed that it had been approached about a possible takeover. Yue Xiu, an investment arm of the government in Guangdong province, is believed to be the bidder.