Rita Tong Liu The Woman Who Owns Some Of Hong Kong's Most Prestigious
This story appears in the January 23, 2017 issue of Forbes Asia. Subscribe to Forbes AsiaReal estate tycoon Rita Tong Liu (廖湯慧靄）sits by a round table surrounded by fridges storing at least 200 bottles of wine, the family's traditional beverage. She's in a corner meeting room overlooking Victoria Harbor. "I was very lucky. My family was used to women in business," she says. Back in Macau, her grandmother Tong worked in the family business selling groceries and brewing rice wine. Then her widowed mother built houses along the Macau piers with timber imported from abroad. Today Liu, 68, a devout Catholic who radiates a motherly warmth and laughs loudly, controls a vast Hong Kong property portfolio. She debuts on FORBES ASIA's list of Hong Kong's 50 wealthiest this year with an estimated fortune of $2.7 billion. Liu is one of a dozen big-time but usually anonymous local property investors who hold their assets privately and rarely buy or sell. "They are not punters, and they may look at the market that institutional players are not interested in," says Antonio Wu, Colliers' deputy managing director in Hong Kong. "They can hold assets for a longer term . . . with low initial yields."Like the others, Liu is a faceless landlord collecting rents from behind a veil of corporate entities. "We hold for the long term," she says. "When we do sell, we trade up for better properties with the money we get."Her family's Gale Well Group （紀惠集團） waded into luxury flats and houses shortly after it started in 1976. But it found that the yields, between 2% and 4%, are constrained by the tight budgets of the multinational companies that supply most of the tenants. A foray in 2000 into parking had her crowned the car-park queen, but soon she was faced with the vagaries of chasing renters who are often behind the wheel. Liu's husband died in 2003. Soon after she decided to move into commercial office space, especially grade-A offices, and out of car parks. Grade-A space in Hong Kong's financial district is famous for tight supply and gravity-defying prices. Brokerage Knight Frank says there are just 24 million square feet in Central and nearby, no more than 45 buildings. Jones Lang LaSalle says that the cost in Central is $206 a square foot annually to rent, 50% more than in London and New York. The move paid off: Her stable includes entire floors in Grand Millennium Plaza, Shun Tak Centre, Far East Financial Centre, Lippo Centre and the Admiralty Centre, and all of the China Insurance Group Building and Austin Plaza. She owns six entire buildings. She bought her oldest property, a luxury housing estate in Stanley, in 1987 for $38 million. With the recent buyout of the last owner of a unit, she owns the lot, a status qualifying for a 20% premium on the value. A bid of $516 million recently came knocking. From the beginning Liu has leaned on two loyal lieutenants, her younger brothers, Jacinto Tong （湯文亮）, 65, and Luis Tong （湯子亮）, 63.
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