Forbes

“My first involvement in the

management of gaming was when

Mr. Ho fell ill,” she says. “But before

2009 I had followed Mr. Ho for so

many years. ... I’d learned from his

life experience, his business visions.

... I did not have much school train-

ing, but I knew I had to digest what

I learned from him.”

An early business trip together

in the 1990s took them to Beijing

to advance a joint idea with fel-

low tycoon Gordon Wu to build a

bridge over the waterways linking

Hong Kong and Macau. The bridge

project and related transportation

infrastructure are now coming to

income is sufficient to pay the bank
loans,” she says from L’Avenue’s of-
fice there. “This year our return of
8% for this building is higher than
what you’d earn from the bank. We
want to stay for the long haul.”
Her admission to the big boys’
club—that is, land auctions held by
the Hong Kong government—was
underscored last August with a
winning HK$548 million bid for a
parcel near the border with Shen-
zhen. A further HK$1 billion will
turn it into an exclusive 16-villa
community.
Leong’s company tends to go
solo in its ventures but will partner
on unusual opportunities. “I like
projects with special characteris-
tics, incorporating arts, design or
furnishings,” she says.
An early joint effort became her
biggest Macau property, the 21-story
L’Arc hotel. It’s part of a 55-story
commercial-residential complex
next to the Wynn and Sands casi-
nos on the peninsula. Development
started in 2006 as a 50-50 venture
with tycoon Cheng Yu-tung of New
World Development.
Leong says she benefited from
working alongside Cheng. While
she was deterred by high land
prices, Cheng was unfazed. In-
stead he kept minute tabs on other
expenses, while taking care to see
profits were shared with outside
investors. Selling all the residential
units when there was still room for
prices to rise (they’ve nearly tripled
since) ran against Leong’s inclina-
tion. “He said, while we are making
money, we also need to leave money
on the table for others and to get the
liquidity,” she says. “I learned a lot
from him.” In 2010, Leong took full
control of the hotel.
Stanley Ho fell ill in 2009, and
the eventual parceling out of assets
among the complex family was the
subject of a bitter legal dispute.
(Two children from his second mar-
riage, Pansy and Lawrence Ho, are

separately billionaire rivals to some

of Leong’s interests today.) But from

the outset she was proactive at SJM,

and its moves today bear her stamp

just as her L’Avenue properties do.

“I am applying [L’Arc’s] experience

to the new Lisboa Palace in Cotai,”

she says. Set to open in 2017, it will

comprise a Palazzo Versace hotel,

the third Versace boutique world-

wide and the Macau Karl Lager-

feld, the world’s first hotel by the

designer.

Today she has a 12% stake in

SJM. Her two adult children by

Stanley Ho, Sabrina and Arnaldo,

both work there.

JULY 2016 FORBES ASIA | 29

L’Avenue in Shanghai, also known as the Boot.