Mall boss makes space for big ideas
Innovation is key for SHKP's Maureen Fung, who has taken the firm's midnight mall concept to Shanghai, where it is building up its portfolio
As general manager of Sun Hung Kai Properties' leasing department, Maureen Fung Sau-yim has seen the development of a string of new shopping malls over the past decade, each one bigger than the last.
When that was opened in 2011, she began pre-leasing another luxury complex, the 1.3 million sq ft iAPM, on Shanghai's busiest shopping strip at 999 Huai Hai Zhong Road. Today, iAPM is fully let, with 10 per cent of its 238 tenants, including Gucci Café, making their mainland debuts.
Fung, founding chairwoman of the Institute of Shopping Centre Management, has more than two decades' experience in retail leasing. She entered the property industry as a management trainee at a private developer and then moved to K Wah Properties before getting involved in the leasing of residential, commercial and industrial property during a two-year stint at Cheung Kong. She joined SHKP - Hong Kong's biggest private mall owner, with a retail portfolio of 10 million square feet - as a senior leasing manager in 1991. SHKP also owns 5.2 million sq ft of retail properties on the mainland, largely from the Shanghai IFC mall and iAPM, with a further 6.6 million sq ft under construction.
In September, SHKP bought an office-retail-hotel plot in Shanghai's Xujiahui district, which will yield 7.6 million sq ft of gross floor space, for a record 21.77 billion yuan (HK$27.8 billion).
However, the mainland luxury sales market hit a snag when Beijing launched an anti-graft campaign. Sales of luxury goods on the mainland were up just 2 per cent year on year last year, to 116 billion yuan, according to global consultancy Bain & Co. It said the central government's efforts to curb the wastage of public money and weed out corruption had had a large impact on "gifting luxury", with watches and menswear having taken the biggest hit.