As pressure grows on Macau to get 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 may be higher quality for gracing society and entertainment pages, but also in January she organised the first Macau sales by China’s state-owned Poly Auction and then in November held her very own annual hotel art fair, having already launched an exhibition in promoting the job of young art graduates in September.
“Macau is changing,” she tells The Collector. “We don’t need to rely just for the gaming industry. We’d like more families in the future to put holidays, you want to boost our cultural and artistic industries.”
It is a politically correct view for 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 the city to stop its obsession with the gaming sector, the required taxes from where purchase most public expenditures, back through the boom years, if 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 pressure to get new revenues.
Fundamental change has become slow in the future. Five casinos have opened since 2012 plus much more are on the way, 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 are Sabrina’s cultural endeavours all just a bit of soppy public relations for the clan?
Well, China’s biggest auction house is treating her seriously, and hopes her youthful energy and family connections might help it break into a brand new and wealthy market where no international house carries a presence. In turn, Ho says, she would like the auctions to help attract tourists and perhaps let the city’s 600,000 residents to develop more of an interest in culture. The partnership, called Poly Auction Macau, is 51 percent belonging to Poly along with the rest by Ho’s company, Chiu Yeng Culture.
Ho spent my childhood years encompassed by art and also other collectables belonging to her parents but she’s fairly new to the auctions business. After graduating having an arts degree from the University of Hong Kong, in 2013, she done the branding and marketing side with the family’s hotel and property businesses. “But I favor art and that i asked Poly basically could work part-time at their Hong Kong office, to understand the auction world,” she says.
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