Edited by: JV Staff
Joseph Lau was born on July 21, 1951 in Hong Kong. He has a younger brother Thomas and two younger sisters. He had his university education in Canada. He is a self-made billionaire and has 6 children from 3 women and got remarried a second time in 2016
Joseph Lau Luen Hung is a Hong Kong billionaire. He owns a 61% stake in Chinese Estates Holdings and his fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.1 billion as of April 2017. He is also, according to Wikipedia, “a convicted felon and fugitive in Macau.”
An avid art collector, his wealth also includes pieces from Warhol, Gauguin and Hockney that are worth at least $1 billion
The bulk of his fortune is now derived from prime real estate holdings in Hong Kong.
In 2017 Joseph Lau said he transferred most of his wealth to his wife and a son, citing serious health issues. Lau is one of the 10 richest men in Hong Kong, according to Forbes.
In May 2007, Lau was revealed to be among the first seven purchasers of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet for private use, ABC reported.
According to the Sunday Times, Lau owns a collection of 10,000 bottles of red wine and is an avid art collector. On 7 November 2007, he made the top purchase of the evening at a Sotheby’s auction by paying $39.2 million for Paul Gauguin’s Te Poipoi, a painting of a Tahitian scene, Politico says.
In 2009, Lau bought a 7.03 carat blue diamond for his daughter Josephine, that he named the “Star of Josephine” at Sotheby’s for $9.5 million, The Guardian reported.
In November 2014, Lau bought a 9.75 carat blue diamond for his daughter Zoe, at Sotheby’s for $32.6 million, that he named “Zoe Diamond”. He also bought her a Cartier brooch featuring a 10.1 carat ruby,[18] that he named “Zoe Red” at Christie’s for $8.4 million, CBS reported.
In January, an anonymous source — “a person familiar with the matter” — reportedly told Bloomberg News that Lau, 68, was the seller of an enormously expensive painting at auction at Sotheby’s. A spokeswoman for Sotheby’s did not comments on the name of the seller, and Lau “didn’t respond to requests for comment,” according to fa-mag.com.
David Hockney’s “The Splash” was sold for $29.9 million in February. “The 1966 work is a square acrylic painting showing the moment water splashes up in a swimming pool just after a diver enters. The 82-year-old British artist painted it when he lived in Los Angeles, where his long-running interest in swimming pool subjects began,” Reuters noted.
“In 2014, (Lau) was convicted of bribery and money-laundering in Macau,” Bloomberg reported in January in a story headlined “Fugitive Real Estate Mogul Is Seller Of Hockney’s ‘The Splash’.” “He avoided a five-year jail term by not traveling there. Last year, Lau filed — and later retracted — a lawsuit challenging the government’s proposal for extraditions to China, Macau and Taiwan, which has since ignited months of protests.”
Lau is the controlling shareholder of Chinese Estates Holdings, a Hong Kong property developer that builds offices, shopping malls and housing projects. He has an $8.3 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 richest people.
