Hong Kong property magnate Walter Kwok dies, aged 68
- Former chairman of Sun Hung Kai Properties suffered stroke in August, and was receiving treatment at Hong Kong Adventist Hospital
Walter Kwok Ping-sheung, former chairman of Sun Hung Kai Properties, died at Hong Kong Adventist Hospital on Saturday morning two months after he was hospitalised following a stroke.
Kwok, 68, was admitted into Ruttonjee Hospital’s intensive care unit after falling unconscious at his residence at Deep Water Bay in late August.
He was released afterwards, and was transferred to Hong Kong Adventist Hospital, where he was receiving “careful treatment” from multiple doctors after the stroke, his wife Wendy Kwok Lee Ting-wing said in a statement while he was in hospital.
A spokesman for Sun Hung Kai Properties said he did not have any comment about its former chairman’s death.
Kwok, with his younger brothers Thomas and Raymond, inherited control of Sun Hung Kai from their late father Kwok Tak-Seng in 1990. Walter Kwok was born in 1950 in Hong Kong and educated in Britain, earning a master’s in civil engineering from the Imperial College of Science.
Kwok married Lee in 1983 and they had two sons and a daughter. Before that, Kwok was briefly married to Lydia Ku, daughter of a wealthy Shanghai businessman.
In 1997, Walter Kwok was kidnapped by gunmen working for Chinese gangster Cheung Tze-keung, nicknamed “Big Spender”, and spent six days in captivity. He was taken to a small hut in Fanling in the New Territories – the same hut where Cheung had held Victor Li, son of Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing, the year before.