Grandson Of Hong Kong Property Large Solar Hung Kai Cofounder Forges His Personal Path As A Tech Investor
7 min read
Joseph Fung is aware of full nicely that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The 41-year-old is a grandson of legendary share dealer Fung King Hey, one of many “Three Musketeers,” together with Lee Shau Kee and Kwok Tak Seng, who cofounded Solar Hung Kai Properties in Hong Kong, one of many world’s greatest property builders by market capitalization.
It was this consciousness that gave Joseph the braveness to chart his personal path. Whereas the scions of Lee Shau Kee and Kwok Tak Seng stayed in actual property, Joseph is making an attempt to make his personal identify as an investor targeted on a totally unrelated business: Life sciences.
“There’s a excessive stage of humility that must be built-in,” Joseph says in an interview. “Simply since you’re educated in a single sector doesn’t imply you’ll be able to simply survive and even push your manner round with simply pure capital in one other sector.”
He provides: “I believe that is essential as a result of typically once you develop up with a silver spoon, you assume that you may make the most of that capital to make sure that you’ve gotten the hegemony of the continuation of being the most important market participant in that sector.”
Two Worldwide Finance Heart (IFC), fifth left, and the Worldwide Commerce Centre (ICC), third proper, stand on reverse sides of Victoria Harbor because the solar units in Hong Kong.
Jerome Favre/Bloomberg
Based in 1963, Solar Hung Kai Properties codeveloped Hong Kong’s two tallest skyscrapers—Worldwide Commerce Centre and Worldwide Finance Centre—and its different properties embrace town’s 4 Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton motels.
In 1972, Solar Hung Kai Properties listed in Hong Kong with a market cap of HK$400 million. Its market cap is now over HK$300 billion (round $40 billion), making it the second-largest Hong Kong firm on town’s inventory trade after its listed operator, Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing.
A 12 months after Solar Hung Kai Properties’ IPO, Lee Shau Kee began one other property developer, Henderson Land; in 2019, he stepped down from working the corporate and handed the reins to his two sons, Peter and Martin, making them joint chairmen.
In the meantime, a number of youngsters and grandchildren of the late Kwok Tak Seng (who handed away in 1990 on the age of 79) are administrators of Solar Hung Kai Properties, together with chairman Raymond (Kwok Tak Seng’s youngest son) and his sons Edward and Christopher.
As for Fung King Hey, he left Hong Kong for Canada in 1967 when lethal pro-Communist riots shook Hong Kong, which was then a British colony. Fung King Hey returned to Hong Kong the next 12 months and in 1969 arrange his personal brokerage agency, Solar Hung Kai Securities, which grew to turn into the most important Chinese language-owned dealer within the metropolis.
Fung King Hey handed away in 1985 and his youthful son, Tony, took over the agency. In 1996, the Fung household offered a 33.18% stake within the venerable retail brokerage home to Malaysian property magnate Lee Ming Tee’s Allied Group for $96 million.
Administrators of Solar Hung Kai Finance (from second left) Dennis Lam, Tony Fung Wing-cheung, Eddie Lau Yum-chuen, Ronald Arculli, Solar Solar Chan and Andy H. S. Lam.
South China Morning Submit through Getty Photos
In the meantime, Fung King Hey’s elder son, Thomas, was constructing his personal enterprise empire in Canada.
Thomas, his spouse, and his son, Joseph, moved again to Canada in 1984 and settled down in Vancouver. Within the early Nineties, he helped pioneer Asian-style buying facilities (megamalls like these in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay buying district) in Vancouver as Hong Kong residents started emigrating in droves over worries in regards to the then British colony’s handover to Chinese language rule.
Now, Thomas is considered one of Vancouver’s most prominent entrepreneurs, along with his Fairchild Group proudly owning actual property, eating places and TV stations in Chinese language throughout Canada.
“I used to be in a position to construct up my very own popularity, my very own methods of studying and to construct up that sense of confidence to my very own failures and my very own achievements with out making an attempt to be benchmarked in opposition to my members of the family.”
Having seen the success of laissez-faire parenting, Thomas gave the identical freedom to his solely youngster.
“From my father’s aspect, he by no means actually was given the stress that he should take over the enterprise and to run it precisely the way in which he desires. He was allowed to discover and to grasp his personal capabilities and validate that,” says Joseph. “Likewise, for myself in a really related vein, I by no means had the strain and by no means really even thought of absolutely that I wanted to take over the household enterprise at any time in my life.”
After incomes an economics diploma from Cornell College, Joseph labored in finance at Citigroup and Morgan Stanley earlier than becoming a member of Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li’s PCCW, the place he helped with the communications and media group’s content material acquisitions. After greater than a decade of working for another person, Joseph launched his personal enterprise capital agency, Saltagen Ventures, in 2017.
“I used to be in a position to construct up my very own popularity, my very own methods of studying and to construct up that sense of confidence to my very own failures and my very own achievements with out making an attempt to be benchmarked in opposition to my members of the family,” says Joseph. “So we’re given much more free rein to fail, and I believe that’s essential.”
Joseph Fung, managing accomplice of Saltagen Ventures.
COURTESY OF SALTAGEN VENTURES
Based mostly in Hong Kong and Vancouver, Saltagen is targeted on early-stage investments in science and know-how. Over the previous 5 years, Saltagen has invested greater than $18 million throughout 20 startups globally, together with in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Hong Kong and the U.S.
Joseph Fung is particularly concerned about life sciences corporations that flip science into business purposes.
Its portfolio corporations in Hong Kong embrace Fano Labs, an AI startup spun off from the College of Hong Kong and funded by Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures, and Cathay Photonics, a maker of sapphire-based display screen safety movies for shows that’s backed by Hong Kong billionaire Tang Yiu’s ParticleX. Fano Labs is likely one of the 16 Hong Kong startups that made final 12 months’s Forbes Asia 100 to Watch, an inventory of notable small corporations and startups on the rise within the Asia-Pacific area.
Joseph says Saltagen has greater than $50 million in property underneath administration and its restricted companions embrace C-level administration of huge multinational corporations in Hong Kong and a billionaire founding father of a semiconductor firm, in addition to the Fung members of the family.
“Primary is that I distance myself from having conflicts of curiosity in order that if something, our household is simply a really small LP, however you recognize that we’ve got pores and skin within the recreation,” says Joseph. “They gained’t be the drivers for the decision-making course of.”
Saltagen invests in a broad vary of industries, together with cultivated meat and edtech, however Joseph is particularly concerned about biotechnology, pharmaceutical and different life sciences corporations that flip science into business purposes. “Life sciences is likely one of the quickest rising sectors globally,” says Joseph.
He isn’t the one one optimistic about the way forward for the life sciences sector, which has seen elevated curiosity for the reason that pandemic started. Singapore billionaire Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital Group and Midas Lister Nisa Leung’s Qiming Enterprise Companions, for instance, took half in a $60 million sequence D spherical in Hong Kong-based biotech startup Insilico Medication in June final 12 months.
However Joseph has lengthy been within the life sciences, particularly the science half.
Like his father, Joseph enjoys cooking, significantly the meals chemistry side of it. “That was the factor that hooked me in,” he says. “It’s not about simply making a pleasant dish, plating it and even understanding how the flavors go nicely collectively, however understanding chemistry—the science course of behind it.”
He provides: “As soon as you set in a variety of work and energy into understanding the whys and rationale, you’ll be able to construct as much as your goal objective.”
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