Sabrina Ho looks to Macau art fairs and auctions to diversify economy away from casinos
As pressure grows on Macau to find new sources of revenue, scion of casino dynasty imagines some other future to the other SAR
Sabrina Ho Chiu-yeng is doing what she will to assist Macau diversify. The 26-year-old daughter of Stanley Ho Hung-sun may be more well known for gracing society and entertainment pages, but in January she organised the very first Macau sales by China’s state-owned Poly Auction and also in November held her annual hotel art fair, having already launched an exhibition to advertise the project of young art graduates in September.
“Macau is changing,” she tells The Collector. “We don’t desire to rely just about the gaming industry. We’d like more families in the future here for holidays, we want to boost our cultural and artistic industries.”
This is a politically correct view to the daughter of an casino magnate. Macau is within the cross hairs of Beijing’s war on corruption and capital outflow. The central government started urging the location to quit its dependence on the gaming sector, the taxes from where spend on most public expenditures, back through the boom years, once the “build it and they will come” mentality ruled the casino industry. Today, mainland policies to discourage high rollers along with a slowing economy have risen the stress to find new revenues.
Fundamental change has become slow in the future. Five casinos have opened since 2012 plus more take presctiption the way, including two from branches in the Ho empire – the Grand Lisboa Palace, led by Ho’s mother, Angela Leong On-kei (Stanley’s so-called “fourth wife”), and MGM Cotai, headed by Sabrina ho‘s half-sister Pansy Ho Chiu-king.
So can be Sabrina’s cultural endeavours all slightly of soft advertising to the clan?
Well, China’s biggest ah is treating her seriously, and hopes her youthful energy and family connections might help it get into a fresh and wealthy market where no international house carries a presence. Inturn, Ho says, she wants the auctions to assist attract tourists as well as perhaps encourage the city’s 600,000 residents to produce really an interest in culture. The partnership, called Poly Auction Macau, is 51 per cent of Poly and the rest by Ho’s company, Chiu Yeng Culture.
Ho was raised flanked by art as well as other collectables of her parents but she actually is a newcomer to the auctions business. After graduating with the arts degree from the University of Hong Kong, in 2013, she labored on the branding and marketing side in the family’s hotel and property businesses. “But I prefer art i asked Poly only perform in their free time at their Hong Kong office, to find out about the auction world,” she says.
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