Lui Che Woo, Casino Tycoon Who Hit Jackpot In Macau, Dies At 95

(Bloomberg) --Lui Che Woo, the Hong Kong tycoon whose fortune grew alongside neighboring Macau’s casino industry, has died. He was 95.

He died on Nov. 7, according to a statement released by Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd., where he was founder and chairman. “His vision, tremendous leadership and guidance were the foundations for the group’s development and continued success,” the company’s board said in the statement.

Lui had an estimated net worth of $14.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him one of the richest people in Hong Kong.

He built his empire in what became the world’s biggest gambling hub from scratch, competing with industry veterans including Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson. He won a gaming license in 2002 when the former Portuguese colony’s government ended a 40-year monopoly held by Stanley Ho, the so-called King of Gambling, who died in 2020.

Lui started his first resort, StarWorld Macau, in 2006 before opening the Galaxy Macau in the Cotai area, Asia’s version of the Las Vegas Strip, in 2011. “Don’t just think, ‘Oh, he’s got so rich!’ You don’t know how many obstacles he’s had to go through,” Lui said in an interview that year with Hong Kong’s Phoenix Television.

Lui was born on Aug. 9, 1929, in the city of Jiangmen in China’s Guangdong province, just north of Hong Kong. In 1934, the family crossed into the then-British colony to flee the war-torn mainland. Relatively well-off at the time, the family lost its fortune after the Japanese military invaded Hong Kong in 1941.

Lui graduated from a primary school in the Yau Ma Tei area of Kowloon but dropped out in the first year of secondary school because he didn’t want to study Japanese, he said in a 2019 interview with the public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong. At 13, he started to help support the family, which grew to include five sisters, by selling Chinese baked goods.

He made his first fortune after World War II buying surplus US construction equipment in Okinawa and importing it to Hong Kong, which was undergoing a building boom as people fled the turbulent mainland. In 1955, he founded K. Wah Group, quarrying construction materials.

He invested the profits he made from construction into residential property development and, later, hotels in Hong Kong. In 1979, he began building his first, originally a Holiday Inn and later rebranded as the InterContinental Grand Stanford. The InterContinental was built for HK$300 million ($38 million); by the 1990s, the hotel was valued at more than HK$1 billion and became the group’s flagship.

In 2002, Lui ventured into the gaming industry in collaboration with Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. Within a year, however, they split the gaming license and went separate ways after falling out over strategy: Adelson wanted to recreate Las Vegas in China, while Lui wanted to cater more to Asian tastes. That meant, among other things, Chinese restaurants and clear signs for exits and entrances. His son, Francis, said in a 2006 interview with Next Magazine that his father compared American casinos to mazes.

The spectacular growth in Macau casinos was fueled by rising interest from mainland Chinese gamblers. Macau casino revenue hit $44.7 billion in 2013 — almost seven times that of the Las Vegas Strip. Revenue dropped off significantly, however, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when China’s travel restrictions kept tourists away.

Galaxy bought shares in Wynn Resorts Ltd. after Steve Wynn stepped down as chairman.

K. Wah Group operates across mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Southeast Asia and the US. The group had a stake in San Francisco-based Stanford Hotels, which owned a group of Hiltons, Sheratons and Marriotts in the US.

Lui, who was almost always seen wearing a flat cap, was a bigger fan of golf and Chinese calligraphy as hobbies than of gambling — except perhaps when it came to playing mah-jong.

Stepping into the shoes of Alfred Nobel, in 2015 he unveiled a “prize for world civilization” with a cash payout of HK$20 million — roughly double the amount of a Nobel Prize.

“To some extent, it is a bit similar to the Nobel Peace Prize but the concept of our prize is broader,” Lui said in a 2018 interview with Bloomberg News. It awards contributions related to sustainable development, improvement in human welfare and promotion of positive attitudes. Laureates include The Nature Conservancy, the International Paralympic Committee and former US President Jimmy Carter.

Lui said his philanthropic vein stemmed from his childhood, when he was denied a formal education during the Japanese invasion. He was a big donor to Peking University, where he was an honorary trustee after pledging $18 million.

“I saw so many poor and suffering people in Japan-invaded Hong Kong. I bear that deeply in my mind,” Lui said in tears in the 2019 RTHK interview.

In 1952, Lui married Lui Chiu Kam-ping, who kept a low profile. They had five children.

Lui installed family members across his business empire, bringing further comparisons with Stanley Ho.

His eldest son Francis Lui Yiu Tung joined the group in 1979 and became an executive director 10 years later. Another son, Lawrence Lui, went to run Stanford Hotels in the US, while the youngest, Alexander Lui Yiu Wah, and his sister, Paddy Tang Lui Wai Yu, were put in charge of K. Wah’s Hong Kong properties.

The younger daughter, Eileen Lui Wai Ling, was in charge of group administration.