True visionary: Hong Kong tycoon Cheng Yu-tung was quick to spot an opportunity ... and know when to stand aside

Billionaire Cheng Yu-tung, who died on Thursday aged 91, made his fortune half a century ago from jewellery and property, amassing the third largest fortune in Hong Kong.

He was the first of the city’s ageing property tycoons to step down from leading the businesses they had largely built from scratch during the boom years of the 1960s and 1970s, handing power to a new generation and winning the praise of analysts for showing such rare vision.

A number of Cheng’s peers still head their empires, including Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, the 88-year-old chairman of Cheung Kong; Lee Shau-kee, 88, of Henderson Land Development; and Macau casino magnate Stanley Ho Hung-sun, the 94-year-old chairman of Shun Tak Group.

Cheng had been in poor health for a number of years, suffering a stroke in September 2012 that shocked the market. It happened just seven months after he announced his retirement by relinquishing both his posts as chairman and executive director of New World Development, the company he founded in 1970.

So Ngok, a former executive director of New World and New World China Land, who worked closely under Cheng as the firms began to invest in mainland China in the mid-1980s, praised the tycoon on Friday as a man of great vision.