Hong Kong property tycoon loses billions as business empire unravels in battle with debt collectors

In just five years, Hong Kong property tycoon Pan Sutong has gone from ranking among Asia’s wealthiest people to having his company’s flagship skyscraper seized by creditors chasing more than US$1 billion of debt.

It’s a swift fall from grace for Pan, 57, who was Asia’s fourth-richest man in 2015 with a net worth of US$27 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. But after shares of his Goldin Financial Holdings plunged and with most of his properties locked up as collateral for loans, he has fallen off the list of the world’s 500 wealthiest people.

Pan’s initial wealth came from dealing in and then manufacturing electronics, an area he ventured into after moving to Hong Kong from California, where he’d spent his teens skipping school and hanging out at his family’s chain of Chinese restaurants. He transitioned to property investing in 2008, a few years into a red-hot boom that would mint numerous fortunes in Hong Kong and make it one of the world’s most expensive real estate markets.

He now joins other investors in Hong Kong who overextended themselves during the boom, only to be undone as months of civil unrest and the coronavirus pandemic plunged the city into its worst recession on record.

Tang Shing-bor, a veteran investor known as the “Shop King” for his vast holdings of retail properties, is seeking to sell billions of dollars of real estate. A group of investors who paid US$5.2 billion for The Center in the world’s most-expensive office deal, have been unable to flip floors in the building as the market ground to a halt last year.