30 | FORBES ASIA JULY 2016FORBES ASIA
ASIA’S POWER BUSINESSWOMEN — ANGELA LEONGfruition. Wu, of Hopewell Holdings,
recalls “Mr. Macau” Ho working
every angle to get an official go-
ahead—and, as Leong notes, bring
more traffic to his casinos. Leong
also accompanied him to Japan to
test and buy 6-seat helicopters (now
12-seaters) to bring high-stakes
gamblers in Hong Kong to Macau in
30 minutes.
Their many vacation trips in Aus-
tralia yielded several assets she still
owns in the lucky country, foremost
among them a 3,108-hectare golf
course bought in the 1990s on the
Gold Coast, where she is now building
luxury apartments. She also bought
land facing the Sydney Opera House
and built a 14-flat apartment house,
which she sold around the time of the
Olympics in 2000. She keeps a pent-
house and a small unit for herself.
Since 2005, Leong has been an
elected legislator, now in her third
term, representing the gambling
industry in Macau’s parliament. She
sounds a balanced note on casinos’
future: “Everyone feels the pressure,
feels the impact on society and espe-
cially on public livelihood. Now as
growth has stabilized, I believe it will
allow small and medium business,
and the [gambling] industry, to plan
for diversification, such as tourism.”
The setting of her affair with Ho,
Sao Tiago Hotel, is a 400-year-old
stone fort where Portuguese soldiers
fought off Chinese pirates, and every
tree is protected by regulations. It
has required high upkeep since she
bought it in 1990s. “It’s a memory for
Mr. Ho,” she says. “Its value is not in
making money. It’s about preserving
the historic heritage.”
“She likes old stuff. She would
spend a long time just to repair a
stool. This hotel is not for investment.
It’s losing money. The maintenance
fees are high,” Connie Kong, CEO of
L’Arc Macau, says of her boss.
That boss nowadays has plenty of
stuff, new and old, to “work on.”
Additional reporting: Robert OlsenFInside the new Hong Kong of-
fices of L’Avenue, the holding
company for Angela Leong’s
properties, a team of 25 pro-
fessionals has relocated from
a smaller perch near Cause-
way Bay. They toil away on
asset arrangements and deals,
done through some 250
subsidiaries.
It’s a family office, distinct
from Leong’s stake in SJM
Holdings. “It is only for non-
gaming business. When bank-
ers approach us, they don’t
look at the gaming side,” says
Terry Ng, CEO of L’Avenue.
“We don’t have a trading
room. We have accounts with
the majority of the private bank-
ing groups. Private bankers have
information on our shares and
investment positions as well,”
Ng says. “We have properties,
long-term investments, short-
term development projects and
things like that.”
Ng is a veteran of the inside
track at Hang Lung Group,
controlled by billionaire broth-
ers Ronnie and Gerald Chan.
Before that he was executive
director of retailer Giordano.
He has applied his mix
of retailing and property
expertise on at least two
Hong Kong buildings under
L’Avenue’s stable: Macau Ya
Yuen Centre, next to the Sogo
department store there, and
the Phoenix in Wanchai. Such skills will be in greater demand as the com-
pany expands. “We are still accumulating properties,” he says.
Both Ng and Leong dislike debt. “I am a very conservative guy. Our re-
turns must be higher than our cost of funding. I always look at interest turn-
over, current debt-over-equity ratio,” he says. “We are in a net cash position;
our gearing is in the teens. We are ultraconservative compared with highly
geared Chinese real estate developers.”
Leong concurs. “If I can borrow the same amount of money to buy three
buildings, I’d use the same money to buy just one. I am more conservative,
but I can focus on making it better.” —S.C.J.C.
L’HUB
Leong’s busy Hong Kong staff of 25 professionals
now sit in her Entertainment Building.