Stanley Ho
Businessman who built gambling empire in Macao
asino tycoon Stanley Ho, whose business empire dominated the Portuguese gambling enclave of Macao for decades, died on Tuesday in Hong Kong at 98. Considered the father of modern gambling in China, Ho’s long and eventful life tracked the ebb and flow of southern China’s fortunes. After a swashbuckling start as a kerosene trader, he ended up as Macau’s richest person, a lavish spender and debonair ballroom dancer.
A family statement said he died peacefully in his sleep, but did not give a cause of death.
Of mixed Chinese and European heritage, Ho fathered 17 children with four women, an extended family that engaged in high-profile squabbles over his legacy during his later years. Ho had stakes in businesses running everything from the ferries and helicopters connecting Hong Kong and Macao to department stores, hotels, Macao’s airport and its horse-racing tracks.
But, he said in 2001: “I don’t gamble at all. I don’t have the patience. Don’t expect to make money in gambling. It’s a house game. It’s for the house.”
Ho was born into the Hotung family, one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest and most powerful. When he was 13 his father abandoned the family after being wiped out by a stock market crash during the Great Depression. Ho’s studies at Hong Kong University were interrupted by the Second World War. Fluent in English and Chinese, he was working as a telephone operator for British forces when the colony fell to Japan. He boarded a boat for neutral Macao, joining refugees from mainland China in the dying fishing port.
“I had to throw away my uniform and run to Macao as a refugee,” Ho said. During the war, Ho said he ran nighttime smuggling and trading trips up the Pearl River Delta, on one occasion surviving a pirate attack. Eventually he securedafour-decademonopoly on casinos in Macao, using that home advantage to build an empire that still dominated the industry for years after the local gaming market opened to foreign companies in 2002.
Ho occasionally made news with extravagant gestures such as paying $8.9 million in 2007 for a bronze horse head looted by French troops from China’s imperial palace 150 years earlier so he could donate it to a Chinese museum. He also twice bid a record $330,000 for truffles at charity auctions.
In 2009, Ho had brain surgery after reportedly falling at home. He spent seven months in hospital and was rarely seen in public afterward, usually in a wheelchair.
Ho is survived by three of his wives and 16 children – his eldest son, Robert, died in a car crash in Portugal in 1981.
Daughter Pansy is co-chair of rival MGM’S Macao casino business. His son Lawrence runs another competitor, Melco. Another daughter, Josie, is an actress and singer.
In 2011 a very public feud erupted over control of his multibillion-dollar stake in Macao casino operator SJM Holdings Ltd. Ho disputed a supposed transfer of his entire stake to five of his children and one of his wives, calling it a “robbery” contrary to his desire to divide the fortune equally among various family members. The dispute was settled after several lawsuits, and Ho transferred most of his SJM shares to family while remaining chairman until he retired at 96. He had left the same job at his Hong Kong conglomerate Shun Tak Holdings a year earlier.
Ho was low key but proud of his role in transforming Macao from a decaying backwater deluged with refugees into the glittering destination it is today. “In those days, the Portuguese said Stanley Ho was a dreamer. I have fulfilled all my promises,” he said in 2001. “I feel rather proud in having succeeded.”