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APPENDIX
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15
B. Hotels: background notes
Hotels:_background
Extracts from news reports:
(Asian Wall Street Journal, September 22)
Mr. Yip is a director of the syndicate granted exclusive rights to operate casinos in Macao. He is also chairman of World-Wide Properties Corp., which last month set a land- sale record in Hong Kong by paying $123 million for a 42,620-square-foot site. A three- story commercial podium, topped by a 37-story office tower, will be built there.
Mr. Yip's son, William Yip, who is also a director of World-Wide, said in a telephone interview that his family was seriously interested in becoming involved in the development of tourism in China.
He said that preliminary discussions had been held several weeks ago in Hong Kong with Henry Liu, who has been authorized by the General Administration for Travel and Tourism of China to initiate negotiations on "the development of tourism, including tourist hotels construction."
Mr. Yip said that Intercontinental, which has been negotiating with the Chinese, and the Yip family interests can complement each other. "China wants an international first class chain of hotels," he said. "Intercontinental has this type of ability. We don't have that much experience in the hotel business."
(Far Eastern Economic Review, August 18)
Behind World-Wide Properties, the small company of which Yip is a director, lies a web of financial and personal relationships linking Fukienese entrepreneurs in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan to two little-known but powerful Hongkong conglomerates, Federal Amalgamated Corporation and International Consolidated Investment, which have interests in a wide variety of business in the territory.
World-Wide is not these companies' only property interest. Through their associated and subsidiary banking companies, the conglomerates control a substantial minority shareholding in Sino Realty, another small (HK$43.7 million assets at June 30, 1977, the date of the last accounts) developer which has recently been buying sites in Nathan Road, Kowloon. Among other substantial minority shareholders is Ng Teng Fong, boss of the Far East Organisation in Singapore which has developed several prime sites there, including the sucessful Lucky Plaza in Orchard Road, with backing from the Moscow Narodny Bank (Review, July 28). Sino Realty's majority shareholder is the Hongkong branch of the Bangkok Bank.
World-Wide's chairman is Yip Hon, a prominent Macau businessman and developer of the new trotting stadium there, probably through World-Wide, whose articles were changed to accommodate this late in December. Trotting racing is expected to rival the casinos and dog racing as a source of gambling revenue within a few years. Yip Hon is also a director of the Hongkong-registered Hang Lung Bank whose last published balance sheet (at March 31, 1977) showed deposits of HK$1.1 billion, and Chinese from Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia and Hongkong as directors. Hang Lung Bank Nominees hold 4.6% of World-Wide, and a nominee-company subsidiary of its wholly-owned subsidiary Hongkong Industrial and Commercial Bank holds a futher 3.4%.
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