interests; Helmut Schmen, aged 51. an Austrian, heads worldwide Shipping
about 100 vessels: Edgar Cheng, aged 46, a cancer specialist, manages cwice-nvestment, a private finance company; and Shiniotro watari, 43, a Japanese architect, locks after Cornes and co, the tracing firm.
The Times
Issue 64133.
age
42
TMS 24 Sep 91 Sir V. K. PAC; Obituary (686)
Sir Yue-Kong PAO, CBE, shipping and property magnate, known universai Sir Y. K. PAO, died in Hong Kong on September 23 aged 72. He was born on November 10, 1918.
as
SIR Y. K. PAO made his fortune and his name in shipping, buying his first vessel in 1955 and becoming by the early 1980s one of the three giants among the Hong Kong merchant fleet owners and one of the richest men in the world. Yet by the time Margaret Thatcher launched one of his ships in 1984 he had already shifted two-thirds of his funds out of shipping and into property. In a single year he had cut his fleet by almost a third, anticipating the bad times which were soon to cripple so much of the rest of the shipping industry. It was the kind of unsentimental well-thought out business decision for which he was famous. A man who abhorred gambling and preferred to get a small return on a sure investment than play for high stakes on a hunch, PAO always liked to attribute his success to his thorough financial homework. PAO was not always in shipping. Born in Ningpo, China into a wealthy family his father PAO Sui-ioong inherited a shoe-making factory in Hankow, and later moved to Shanghai where he bought a paper-mill and opened up a gold and silver shop the young PAO originally went into banking. It was the career his father had mapped out for him. With the Communist takeover in 1949, however, the PAO family joined the stream of refugees for Hong Kong. He spoke no Cantonese the British colony's native Chinese dialect and only faltering English.
But together father and son began a trading business, bringing Taiwan sugar in for the mainland China market and importing Chinese goods for onward export. But inspired by the ships in Hong Kong harbour, and finding banking and trading too tame, he was soon looking for backers to turn a dream into a sound financial enterprise. Despite his father's warnings he went to the Hongkong Bank, the colony's oldest and largest, and asked for a loan. with that he bought his first ship. More than 30 years later, he was thought to have amassed a fortune of around USdollars 3.5 billions. His main quoted companies, world International and wharf Holdings, through which his empire is run are supplemented by an investment arm, world-wide Investment. The most glamorous element of his business is the upmarket department store Lane Crawford, often described as the Harrods of Hong Kong.
Like other Hong Kong tycoons he gave enormous sums to charities and foundations, endowing a university and other projects in his native Ningpo. He was a member of the Peking-appointed committee that oversaw the drafting / of Hong Kong's post-1997 mini-constitution the Basic Law and liked to maintain good relations with the Peking government, Hong Kong's future rulers. Jovial and charming as well as ruthless and pugnacious, he liked nothing better than hobnobbing with statesmen and royalty, often arranging to meet them as if by chance. He spent his latter years in a round of meetings with Mrs Thatcher, President Bush, the Chinese patriarch Deng Xiaoping and many others. Rumours of a terminal illness that had been circulating for more than a year before his death were countered with jokes about his good health and passion