Pollyanna Chu loses half her wealth on stock plunge

Pollyanna Chu has lost her title as Hong Kong’s richest woman after her listed company turned into Asia’s worst performer this year.

Worth almost USD12 billion as recently as January, she’s seen more than half of her wealth wiped out as the stock crashed. Kingston Financial Group Ltd., which operates businesses including Macau casinos and margin lending, has tumbled 50 percent since Hong Kong’s securities regulator in January warned investors that the company’s shares were overly concentrated among a small number of stockholders.

The company owns the Casa Real and Grandview casinos in Macau and operates under a service agreement with SJM Holdings.

Kingston Financial plunged 8.7 percent yesterday after FTSE Russell, one of the world’s most-followed index providers, removed the stock from its benchmarks. For its financing, the firm relies largely on unsecured loans provided cheaply by Chu and her family, according to January analysis from activist investor David Webb. The stock is the worst performer on MSCI Inc.’s Asian gauge this year, after surging 88 percent in the last quarter of 2017.

Some speculators may have made a killing from Kingston’s misfortunes – short interest was about 6.3 percent of free float as of Friday, according to IHS Markit data. The company declined to immediately comment on the slump in shares.

The Securities and Futures Commission said in a Jan. 29 statement that 20 holders controlled more than 91 percent of the shares as of Jan 8. The stock plunged 17 percent the following day.

Part of Chu’s wealth stems from her father’s background managing casino VIP rooms in Macau. The sector still features prominently in the family controlled business; gaming and hotel revenues from the former Portuguese colony amounted to more than HKD670 million for the 2017 fiscal year, some 23 percent of total sales, according to Kingston’s annual report.

Chu is joining a record $5.2 billion deal to buy most of a Hong Kong skyscraper from Li Ka-Shing’s company, people familiar with the matter said last month. Chu will take a 17 percent stake, they said.

Pansy Ho, the daughter of Stanley Ho, is now No. 1 in Hong Kong’s ultra-rich women list, followed by Vivien Chen, chairwoman of closely held real estate developer Nan Fung Group, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. MDT/Bloomberg