Lee Shau-Kee, the Hong Kong billionaire known as “Asia’s Warren Buffett” and whose business empire included real estate, utilities and public infrastructure, has died. He was 97.
Lee passed away peacefully on March 17, surrounded by family, according to a statement.
Lee founded Henderson Land Development Co. in 1973 and built it into one of Hong Kong’s largest developers on the back of the city’s decades-long real estate boom. His fortune of US$23 billion ($30.64 billion) ranked third in Hong Kong, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
He had two sons — Peter and Martin — who have been co-chairmen of Henderson since 2019, when the elder Lee retired. Margaret, the eldest of his three daughters, is a senior general manager at the portfolio leasing department.
“The co-chairmen have been assisted by professional managers over years which shall ensure business as usual,” said Siu Fung Lung, an analyst with CCB International Holdings Ltd. in a note. “The company is running on a stable financial position.”
The company’s shares fell as much as 1.3% on Tuesday morning while its peers gained.
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Henderson Land’s properties include Hong Kong’s iconic International Finance Centre, the Henderson and a prime commercial project along Victoria Harbour in Central. The developer has also built mid-range and luxury residential projects such as the Holborn in Quarry Bay and the Henley in Kai Tak.
Known for his bullish bets on the stock market in the two years before the 2008 global financial crisis, local media called him “Asia’s Warren Buffett.” He said at the time he had doubled the size of his private investment fund to as much as HK$200 billion ($34.29 billion) within about a year.
“His timing has been amazing when it comes to buying and selling real estate,” Anita Leung, an author and entrepreneur, wrote in a 2011 biography of Lee. “He was able to use Hong Kong as a platform and diversify his investment internationally.”
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Real estate venture
Lee, who kept working for his company until age 91, was known for his frugal lifestyle and his interest in Taoist and Buddhist philosophies, with both emphasizing compassion, moderation and humility.
He once told Leung, his biographer, that he would be willing to swap 99% of his wealth for 30 years of youth.
Lee was born in 1928 in the neighbouring Chinese province of Guangdong to a middle-class family that ran a gold and silver exchange business.
Lee arrived in Hong Kong at age 19 and started his own money exchange, providing services to Chinese businessmen who fled to the then-British colony while mainland China was in a civil war after World War II.
In 1963, Lee, along with partners Kwok Tak-seng and Fung King-hey, co-founded Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd. Taking advantage of the housing demand created by the influx of immigrants and refugees from mainland China, the development company went public and became one of Hong Kong’s biggest developers by market value. All three men became billionaires.
New approach
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Lee left Sun Hung Kai and started Henderson Land in 1973. He remained good friends with Fung and Kwok until their deaths in 1985 and 1990, retaining directorship of Sun Hung Kai until 2020.
But Henderson Land took a different approach from Sun Hung Kai. While the latter eventually became known as a developer of higher-end apartments, Lee focused in Henderson’s early years on the city’s growing middle class, building small units of 300 to 500 sq ft (28 to 46 sqm).
In the 1970s, Henderson Land led a group that won the right to develop the first phase of a massive 10,642-apartment complex in the Shatin district — one of the most iconic residential projects in the city.
He then expanded Henderson by diversifying into utilities and infrastructure and by accelerating real estate investments in mainland China.
While most rivals bought land through government auctions, Lee sent negotiators to persuade owners of dilapidated buildings in older residential areas to sell. Henderson began to acquire farmland in the New Territories that border mainland China from the government and private owners from the 1970s. Decades later, the developer held the largest amount of farmland in the New Territories.
