芜湖柏庄香府:FT社评：富贵所累 Sick in fortune

2011年01月30日 12:57 PMFT社评：富贵所累Sick in fortune
英国《金融时报》社评
评论[3条]中文

If Shakespeare were alive today, he would have had a good line in business books. Macbeth is a primer in how (not) to be a corporate wife; The Merchant of Venice is a cautionary tale about reckless lending. The play Stanley Ho should have read, however, is The Tragedy of King Lear.
如果莎士比亚活到今天，他肯定能在商业书籍中占据一席之地。《麦克白》(Macbeth)讲的是如何成为（或者不要成为） 企业高管的夫人；《威尼斯商人》(The Merchant of Venice)是一个警戒鲁莽放贷的故事。而何鸿燊(Stanley Ho)应该看的，则是《李尔王》(The Tragedy of King Lear)。
It is not clear how the ageing king of Macao’s casinos intended to divide his gambling empire among his progeny. Instead, as in the play, it became apparent this week that the kingdom Mr Ho had built – and thought was his to distribute – had already been lost. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child, as King Lear himself said.
现在尚不清楚的是，这位年事渐高的澳门赌王会如何在子女之间拆分自己的博彩帝国。就像剧中发生的一样，本周的事态显示出，何鸿燊本以为自己打造的这个王国可以由自己来分配，但实则早已失去了它。如李尔王所说，一个忘恩负义的孩子简直比毒蛇的牙更尖利。
Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, Mr Ho must have muttered when he discovered that the majority stake in his gaming and hotels business was already held by his third wife and five children from his second marriage. It would be understandable if Mr Ho, like Lear, had difficulty distinguishing confessions of devotion from the real thing. After all, he has had four wives and at least 15 children. But he shares the king’s fate in now accusing his relatives of grabbing the family business.
在得知他的博彩和酒店帝国已经落入第三房太太和第二段婚姻中的五个子女手中时，何鸿燊一定会说：“忘恩负义啊，尔等铁石心 肠之徒”。如果何鸿燊像李尔王一样，看不出忠心誓言背后的真实目的，也算可以理解，毕竟他有四房太太、十五个子女。但他也落得了李尔王一样的下场——现在 只能指责家人夺取了家族生意。
Lear could have told Mr Ho to make clear and public provision for distributing his estimated $3.1bn fortune among “younger strengths”. Instead, Mr Ho this week repeatedly changed his instructions. Storms raged around an anguished Lear; the jangle of slot machines must be clanging in Mr Ho’s head.
李尔王应该会建议何鸿燊，应当清楚公开地指示，要如何在“年轻力量”中分配他那近31亿美元的财富。然而，何鸿燊在一周内却反复更改指令。痛苦的李尔王在肆虐的暴风雨中挣扎，而何鸿燊脑海里此刻响起的，一定是老虎机的叮铛声。
Mr Ho’s decades-long monopoly of the Macao casinos won him enemies as well as friends, but this is a sorry saga for a man “at the verge of life”. King Lear teaches us not to hope for a sweet ending now – this is Shakespeare’s ultimate tragedy that plays out in five painful acts. With teams of lawyers, 21st-century financial systems and far more progeny, the unfolding tale of Mr Ho’s disappearing kingdom looks set to go on for far longer than that.
何鸿燊在澳门博彩市场长达几十年的垄断给他赢得了朋友，但也树立了敌人。但这却是一个“处在生命边缘”的人的悲剧故事。李 尔王告诉我们，活在现下，别梦想总会有美满结局——这出莎士比亚悲剧中的悲剧，用痛苦的五幕讲述了这个故事。但因为庞大的律师团队、21世纪的金融体系、 数量更多的子女会纷纷出场， 何鸿燊濒临消失的帝国故事的演出时间，恐怕会长很多。
2011年01月28日 07:20 AMLex专栏：何门恩怨Ho vs Ho
英国《金融时报》Lex专栏
评论[8条]中文
When a father signs off a letter to his daughter, “Yours Sincerely,” things have come to a pretty pass. Investors who have poured a net $150bn into emerging market equities over the past two years – much of it into family-dominated firms – should take a good look at the Stanley Ho saga transfixing Hong Kong.
当一位父亲在写给女儿的信中以“您真诚的”(Yours Sincerely)落款时，事情就已经变得一团糟了。过去两年，投资者向新兴市场股市净投入了1500亿美元资金——其中很大一部分进入了家族企业。这些投资者应当好好审视一下震惊香港的“何门恩怨”。
The ailing tycoon, father of 17 children by four women, has spent the past month contesting his own estate with wife number three and five progeny from wife number two. Minority shareholders in Hong Kong-listed SJM Holdings, which took in almost a third of gross gaming revenues in Macau last year, have not known where to look. On Wednesday, the HK$72bn ($9.3bn) company lost almost a 10th, driving its valuation to a historic low relative to peers, before recovering on reports of a truce. There are legitimate reasons for weakness: SJM is yet to develop any properties on Macau’s Cotai strip, for example, where Chinese tourists are increasingly swarming. But the widening discount to the likes of Wynn Macau and Sands China is best explained by squabbles over Mr Ho’s assets. His Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau, which holds 56 per cent of SJM, is a good example of the business model prevalent across Asia, where a patriarch owns an umbrella entity that controls a cascade of subsidiaries and affiliates, often run by his offspring. Prospectuses may warn, as SJM’s did, that founder/chairmen can “influence or control our business in ways that might not be in the interests of other shareholders”. But investors in sprawling conglomerates in India, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia may not appreciate the risk of a feud until they see one. The one constant, as the paterfamilias divvies up the spoils, is that minorities just don’t matter.
何鸿燊(Stanley Ho)共有四个太太，17个子女。过去一个月，这位身体状况欠佳的澳门赌王一直在与二太太的五个子女及三太太争夺自己名下的财产。澳门博彩控股（SJM Holdings，简称：澳博）的中小股东们被弄得不知所措。在香港上市的澳博去年攫取了澳门博彩业近三分之一的毛收入。澳博股价周三一度下跌近十分之 一，相对于同业的估值降至历史低点；收盘时的市值为720亿港元（合93亿美元）。不过，在有关何家内斗休战的消息传出后，澳博股价出现回升。
澳博股价疲软有其合理的理由：比方说，在内地游客日益云集的澳门路氹金光大道 (Cotai Strip)，该公司尚未开发任何地产。但围绕何鸿燊资产的争吵，或许是对澳博与永利澳门(Wynn Macau)和金沙中国(Sands China)等同业公司估值差距不断扩大的最好解释。何鸿燊持有澳博56%股份的澳门旅游娱乐有限公司（STDM，简称：澳娱），是亚洲所盛行的商业模式 的一个范例：一位家长拥有一家控股实体，控制着一系列通常由其后代经营的子公司和附属公司。
正如澳博所做的那样，上市公司可能会在招股说明书中警告，创始人/董事会主席能够“对 我们发挥重大影响力或控制，彼等影响或控制我们的业务的方式可能不符合其他股东的利益”。但是在印度、印尼、韩国、菲律宾、泰国和马来西亚，那些业务纷繁 复杂的集团企业的投资者，除非亲眼目睹，否则可能意识不到家族内斗的风险。在一家之主分家产时，有一点是一成不变的，那就是中小股东们无关紧要。