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FORBES ASIA FEBRUARY 20 20THEPROFILEBIG BYTES
One of Tang Shing-bor’s
most notable redevel-
opment projects is the
Mongkok Computer Centre
in Kowloon. Tang paid
HK$60 million for the old
restaurant that occupied
the building, spent roughly
HK$12 million demolishing
it and then transformed
the space into a three-
story electronics haven with 70-odd retailers. When the new computer
mall opened in 1991, it was fully occupied with shops that, just a couple
blocks from the nearest subway station, attracted 10,000 custom-
ers a day. For years Tang raked in enviable rents—his peak yield was
8.5%. But heavy debts forced him to sell the arcade in 2004 for roughly
HK$400 million. In January 2007, the property investment fund of
Singapore’s Keppel Land, Alpha Investment, bought the building for
HK$750 million.Tang found himself in an elevator to Macquarie’s
offices in Hong Kong’s International Finance Cen-
tre to meet an executive who had flown in from
Sydney with a new offer. “The gweilo [foreigner]
boss was a handsome man,” Tang says. “He was
very straightforward and asked me whether I’d
be willing to sell for HK$850 million.” Macquarie
in 2008 sold its stake in Macquarie Goodman to
its joint venture partner, Goodman Group. Both
Macquarie and Goodman declined to comment
on the deal.ang’s prediction had come true: de-
mand for Hong Kong’s old indus-
trial space had indeed rebounded
—not, as he foresaw, because of
the new airport, but because of
surging demand for the data and fulfillment cen-
ters needed to provide cloud services and e-com-
merce. “There are new technologies like data
center users going into warehouses,” says Samuel
Lai, senior director at property services firm
CBRE in Hong Kong. Tang sold Macquarie Tins
Plaza, earning HK$570 million on his HK$280
million investment. “Tins Plaza was the most
memorable transaction I’ve ever made,” he says.
But Tang wasn’t resting on his laurels. After
seeing the offers roll in for Tins Plaza, he set
about buying another former factory down the
street, the Gold Sun Industrial Building. Unlike
his previous two deals, Gold Sun had several own-
ers, each requiring separate negotiations. Tang
bought the first of the building’s eight stories inProperty is only the latest of
Tang’s several incarnations in a
career that traces Hong Kong’s
own development.
2006; he wouldn’t manage to clinch the eighth
until 2014. “I bought it floor by floor,” says Tang.
Tang’s timing proved impeccable. Eager to
boost the supply of property for offices, hotels
and shopping, Hong Kong’s government in April
2010 implemented incentives to redevelop dis-
used industrial properties. The so-called revital-
ization scheme lifted restrictions on how large a
building developers could build on land convert-
ed from industrial use. The result: Factory pric-
es surged 152% between the policy’s launch and
early 2016, when the government ended the in-
centive. “The best initiative that came out and led
to a lot of transactions was the relaxation on the
plot ratio,” says CBRE’s Lai.
Tang got another lift in 2013, when the gov-
ernment announced the start of construction on
a tunnel linking the new airport and Tuen Mun.
Tang combined his Oi Sun Centre and Gold Sun
Industrial Building into a single development,
One Vista, a two-tower office building and shop-
ping complex. In May 2018, he bundled One Vis-
ta with two other Hong Kong properties and
sold roughly 70% to Jiayuan International for
HK$2.6 billion.
Tang has left Mong Kok to head downtown to
his East Ocean Lafayette restaurant overlooking
Victoria Harbor. Nibbling on fried turnip cake
dipped in spicy Cantonese seafood sauce, he is
closely shadowed by two lawyers sipping tea at
the next table and waiting their turn to update
him on his deal near Kai Tak. Uncle Bor has al-
ready managed to buy 73% of the buildings near
the old airport, just 7% away from the thresh-
old at which he can legally compel the remaining
owners to sell. Redevelopment of Kai Tak stands
to boost property values around the area. And
a new revitalization scheme, launched last year,
has lifted limits yet again on how big developers
can build on converted sites. If and when Tang
clinches ownership, he and his partner for the
property, Chinese Estate Holdings, will be able
to knock down the existing building, and build
a new one with 14 times as much saleable space.
“I’m optimistic about Hong Kong’s future,”
says Tang. “I’ve seen ups and downs. There are
opportunities out of risks. This is my chance—
my turn.”T