As pressure grows on Macau to locate new sources of revenue, scion of casino dynasty imagines an alternative future for your other SAR
Sabrina Ho Chiu-yeng is doing what she can to help Macau diversify. The 26-year-old daughter of Stanley Ho Hung-sun may be also known for gracing society and entertainment pages, but also in January she organised the very first Macau sales by China’s state-owned Poly Auction and then in November held her own annual hotel art fair, having already launched an exhibition to market the project of young art graduates in September.
“Macau is evolving,” she tells The Collector. “We don’t want to rely just on the gaming industry. We’d like more families to come for holidays, we would like to boost our cultural and inventive industries.”
It is a politically correct view for your daughter of your 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 give up its addiction to the gaming sector, the required taxes where spend on most public expenditures, back in the boom years, once the “build it and they can come” mentality ruled the casino industry. Today, mainland policies to discourage high rollers joined with a slowing economy have increased pressure to succeed to locate new revenues.
Fundamental change may be slow to come. Five casinos have opened since 2012 plus more take presctiption the way in which, including two from branches of 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 might be Sabrina’s cultural endeavours all just a bit of sentimental publicity for your clan?
Well, China’s biggest ah is treating her seriously, and hopes her youthful energy and family connections may help it enter a brand new and wealthy market where no international house features a presence. In return, Ho says, she wants the auctions to help attract tourists and maybe let the city’s 600,000 residents to produce really a desire for culture. The partnership, called Poly Auction Macau, is 51 percent belonging to Poly and also the rest by Ho’s company, Chiu Yeng Culture.
Ho spent my youth flanked by art as well as other collectables belonging to her parents but she is a novice to the auctions business. After graduating with an arts degree from the University of Hong Kong, in 2013, she done the branding and marketing side of the family’s hotel and property businesses. “But I like art and I asked Poly basically could work in your free time at their Hong Kong office, to discover the auction world,” she says.
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