30
FORBES ASIA FEBRUARY 20 20THEPROFILETo Tang, though, it was a gem, one of many
forgotten industrial buildings sprinkled around
Hong Kong, well worth the roughly $36 million
he paid for it in 2005. But even he couldn’t have
foreseen that just two years later he would triple
his money on it.
It was by snapping up derelict industrial prop-
erties like Tins Plaza, flipping them or redevel-
oping them, that Tang went from the verge of in-
solvency in 2003 to billionaire in 2016, when he
first made the list of Hong Kong’s richest. Now at
86 and No. 14 on the list with a net worth of $5.7
billion, Tang is making one of his biggest contrar-
ian bets yet.
Despite months of protests casting a pall over
the city’s property market, Tang has embarked on
a shopping spree of Hong Kong’s industrial build-
ings, spending $700 million last year. He ranks as
the biggest buyer of Hong Kong industrial prop-
erties in 2019, according to data from New York-
based research firm, Real Capital Analytics.
“This is the best opportunity I’ve ever seen,”
says Tang in a rare interview, held at one of his
buildings in Hong Kong’s bustling Mong Kok
district, just blocks from where some of the most
violent scenes of unrest have taken place. Dur-
ing the interview, Tang is multitasking, juggling
phone calls from brokers, developers and law-
yers. He is negotiating his next purchase, a di-
lapidated building next to the city’s old Kai Tak
airport, which the government is auctioning off
for redevelopment. To Tang, Hong Kong’s politi-
cal turmoil is only creating better bargains. “We
will move on from this,” he says.
At his side is the youngest of his five sons from
two marriages, Stan Tang Yiu-shing, 34, chair-
man of the holding company he and his father
established in 2013 and named Stan Group. Tang
Sr., whose title is honorable chairman, remains
very involved, and the two meet twice a day. Stan
oversees new businesses and redevelopment ofTins Plaza was an
eyesore, a run-down,
abandoned plastics
factory in the Tuen
Mun district when Tang
Shing-bor first spotted it.
→
properties. Tang still cuts the property deals. “I
make the final decisions,” says Tang in a booming
baritone that belies his age.
Known in Hong Kong’s real estate circles as
“Uncle Bor,” property is only the latest of Tang’s
several incarnations in a career that traces Hong
Kong’s own development—from neon bulb mak-
er in the 1950s, to 1970s restaurateur, to earn-
ing the moniker “shop king” for his string of re-
tail spaces—a foray that almost broke him.
Today, Tang is renowned for his knack of spot-
ting remnants of Hong Kong’s bygone days as
a manufacturing hub, its disused factories and
warehouses, in areas poised for gentrification.
That expertise is attracting eager partners, in-
cluding Hong Kong’s Chinese Estates Hold-
ings and Yangzhou-based Jiayuan International,
which have both set up joint ventures with Stan
Group to redevelop its industrial properties. “He’s
very effective and experienced in converting these
building sites,” says Joseph Lam, associate direc-
tor of industrial services at Colliers International.ang has never feared failure. His
father died when he was 5 and
he was raised by his mother, who
took a low-paying job in a factory
to support them. “I had to come
up with creative ways to survive,” he says. Tang
recalls loitering outside restaurants when he was
hungry, waiting for handouts. Growing up poor
gave him grit: well into his 70s, he kept in shape
with dawn swims beyond the shark net off Hong
Kong’s shore. “There’s always a way,” he says.
“There’s never a problem that can’t be solved.”
With only a primary school education, Tang
became an apprentice in 1950 to an electrician
making neon signs, and in his 20s opened his
own store catering to then-booming demand
for the bright storefront marquees that remain
one of Hong Kong’s hallmarks. Neon success
enabled Tang in 1970 to open a dim sum eat-
ery with friends. That led to a string of restau-
rant investments, including a seafood restaurant
in Sydney, that Tang would in 1982 consolidate
as the East Ocean Gourmet Group, which is still
thriving today.
The 1980s saw Tang branch out into a flurry of
new businesses, including a used car dealership.
But it was buying and selling shops where Tang
made his mark. “Looking after the restaurant ex-
posed him to news of nearby shops,” says Stan.
One of his most notable investments in the fol-
lowing years would be the purchase in 1990 of an
old restaurant building that he would transform
into the renowned Mongkok Computer Centre.T