As pressure grows on Macau to find new options for revenue, scion of casino dynasty imagines a different future for the other SAR
Sabrina Ho Chiu-yeng is performing what she could to help Macau diversify. The 26-year-old daughter of Stanley Ho Hung-sun could be better known for gracing society and entertainment pages, however in January she organised the first Macau sales by China’s state-owned Poly Auction and then in November held her annual hotel art fair, having already launched an exhibit to market the project of young art graduates in September.
“Macau is beginning to change,” she tells The Collector. “We don’t want to rely just on the gaming industry. We’d like more families to come to put holidays, we should boost our cultural and inventive industries.”
This is a politically correct view for the daughter of a casino magnate. Macau is within the cross hairs of Beijing’s fight against corruption and capital outflow. The central government started urging the location to stop its obsession with the gaming sector, the taxes from where buy most public expenditures, back during the boom years, when the “build it and they’re going to come” mentality ruled the casino industry. Today, mainland policies to discourage high rollers combined with a slowing economy have raised the pressure to find new revenues.
Fundamental change may be slow to come. Five casinos have opened since 2012 and more are saved to just how, including two from branches in the Ho empire – the Grand Lisboa Palace, led by Ho’s mother, Angela Leong On-kei (Stanley’s so-called “fourth wife”), and MGM Cotai, headed by Sabrina ho‘s half-sister Pansy Ho Chiu-king.
So may be Sabrina’s cultural endeavours all just a little of sentimental advertising for the clan?
Well, China’s biggest auction house is treating her seriously, and hopes her youthful energy and family connections might help it plunge into a new and wealthy market where no international house has a presence. In exchange, Ho says, sherrrd like the auctions to help attract tourists and maybe let the city’s 600,000 residents to produce more of an interest in culture. The partnership, called Poly Auction Macau, is 51 % owned by Poly and the rest by Ho’s company, Chiu Yeng Culture.
Ho was raised encompassed by art and also other collectables owned by her parents but jane is a novice for the auctions business. After graduating with the arts degree in the University of Hong Kong, in 2013, she handled the branding and marketing side in the family’s hotel and property businesses. “But I love art and that i asked Poly easily will work part time inside their Hong Kong office, to learn about the auction world,” she says.
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