Billionaire Property Heir Has Big Bets on Troubled Hong Kong
(Bloomberg) — From building Hong Kong’s largest shopping mall to constructing a sprawling $3.9 billion sports center, Adrian Cheng has been one of the most aggressive property investors in town. It’s a costly expansion strategy that’s now poised to test one of the city’s oldest real-estate empires.
Cheng, 40, became chief executive officer of New World Development Co. in May, cementing his position after taking over from his father Henry a few years ago. But even as he ascended to the top, Cheng championed ambitious real-estate developments in the financial and tourism hub worth about $5 billion. Conceived on the assumption mainland Chinese visitors would continue to throng Hong Kong, they now mean the family is exposed to some of the city’s largest projects at a time when the coronavirus pandemic and political unrest is crippling its economy.
Few names are more synonymous with Hong Kong than the Chengs. New