As pressure grows on Macau to get new causes of revenue, scion of casino dynasty imagines a different future to the other SAR
Sabrina Ho Chiu-yeng has been doing what she could to help Macau diversify. The 26-year-old daughter of Stanley Ho Hung-sun may be better known for gracing society and entertainment pages, in January she organised the first Macau sales by China’s state-owned Poly Auction and also in November held her own annual hotel art fair, having already launched an exhibit to advertise the job of young art graduates in September.
“Macau has been evolving,” she tells The Collector. “We don’t want to rely just on the gaming industry. We want more families ahead for holidays, we would like to boost our cultural and creative industries.”
This is the politically correct view to the daughter of an casino magnate. Macau is in the cross hairs of Beijing’s war on corruption and capital outflow. The central government started urging town to relinquish its dependence on the gaming sector, the taxes from which buy most public expenditures, back through the boom years, in the event the “build it and they will come” mentality ruled the casino industry. Today, mainland policies to discourage high rollers combined with a slowing economy have risen the stress to get new revenues.
Fundamental change has been slow ahead. Five casinos have opened since 2012 and much more are stored on the way in which, including two from branches with 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 chiu yeng‘s half-sister Pansy Ho Chiu-king.
So can be Sabrina’s cultural endeavours all slightly of soft advertising to the clan?
Well, China’s biggest auction house is treating her seriously, and hopes her youthful energy and family connections will help it enter a new and wealthy market where no international house carries a presence. In turn, Ho says, sherrrd like the auctions to help attract tourists as well as perhaps let the city’s 600,000 residents to develop a greater portion of an interest in culture. Their bond, called Poly Auction Macau, is 51 per-cent properties of Poly along with the rest by Ho’s company, Chiu Yeng Culture.
Ho spent my childhood years in the middle of art as well as other collectables properties of her parents but she is a novice for the auctions business. After graduating having an arts degree through the University of Hong Kong, in 2013, she done the branding and marketing side with the family’s hotel and property businesses. “But I love art and I asked Poly easily will work in your free time inside their Hong Kong office, to find out about the auction world,” she says.
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