Stanley Ho was the ‘king of gambling’ in Macau for 40 years, the result of a government-granted gambling monopoly he owned from 1961 to 2002. This position was lucrative enough and held by Ho for long enough to turn him into a billionaire many times over — at the time of his retirement in 2018, his net worth was estimated to be around $6.4 billion.
A fun fact that we couldn’t put anywhere in this case:
Stanley Ho’s grandfather, Ho Fook and his grand uncle, Robert Ho-Tung, had a half brother by the name of Ho Kom-tong. (Same mother, different father).
Ho Kom-tong had a daughter named Grace Ho.
And Grace Ho was the mother of … Bruce Lee.
I really hope we hear more of this story in the next series on Asian tycoons. I got to the end and desperately want to learn more about the next phase in his career. Great teaser
We will!
I’m not sure if it’ll be as interesting as his WW2 activities though, but the rest of Stanley Ho’s career is definitely worth a look.
Ok I was wrong. Stanley Ho’s life is more interesting and more wild than I’d ever imagined; it is a great first case for the Asian Conglomerate series: How Stanley Ho Built a Gambling Empire - Commoncog Case Library
Very interesting to see how power in more rule-of-law societies takes the form of trade, while in other contexts where the influence of law is not so relevant, power takes the shape of relationships. And that form is more powerful, since it doesn’t depend on institutions to enforce it or some other external constraint.
This of course also exists in contexts where the law has more influence, but it’s not so explicit to an external observer. Maybe that’s what real power looks like, not the capacity to trade something at a given moment, but the ability to hold beneficial relationships over time, where both parties have some leverage over the other, which in a way requires them to support each other.
BTW, really cool compendium of cases on power, particularly the contrast between some western and some eastern contexts. It’s a great reminder that the world is not just a square but a hypercube with n-infinite sides.