Stanley Ho was the ‘king of gambling’ in Macau for 40 years, the result of a government-granted gambling monopoly he owned from 1961 to 2002. This position was lucrative enough and held by Ho for long enough to turn him into a billionaire many times over — at the time of his retirement in 2018, his net worth was estimated to be around $6.4 billion.
But Ho’s history with the former colony went back decades. His skill in business was shaped by certain trading experiences he had as a young man, during World War 2. It is useful to trace these experiences, and examine how dealing with multiple powerful counter-parties in his 20s turned him into the shrewd tycoon most remember him for at the end of his life.
Stanley Ho Hung-sun was born in 1921, not in Macau, a Portuguese colony, but across the Pearl River delta in Hong Kong, under British colonial rule. Ho was of Chinese, Dutch-Jewish and English ancestry — his grandfather was Ho Fook, a prominent merchant and compradore in Hong Kong. This family background is important to understand because Ho Fook was the brother of Robert Ho Tung, probably the greatest compradore of them all.
Location of Hong Kong and Macau. (Source: Ismoon).
In the colonial era, Western banks, trading houses, and colonial officials depended on compradors to intermediate business with the local population. Sir Robert Ho Tung was Jardine Martheson’s comprador, and eventually branched out to start a business empire of his own. He was so important that he was the first Chinese allowed to live on Hong Kong’s Peak — an enclave reserved for Westerners. (Robert got around the Peak District Reservation Ordinance, which banned ‘Asiatics’ from renting property at the Peak, but had nothing to say about purchase. So Robert bought three bungalows — probably to the mild discomfort of his neighbours). At one point, he held shares in one-fifth of the 83 listed companies i ...
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