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The ups and downs of New World’s Adrian Cheng: development, debt and downfall
The litany of projects that Cheng oversaw as CEO of New World made the company one of the city’s most indebted property developers
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On a Monday afternoon in September, when most of the city’s office buildings were busily buzzing like beehives, the lobby of a development called 11 Skies near Hong Kong International Airport could have been mistaken for a deserted library.
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The entrance hall was huge, but hardly anyone was around – save for a couple of receptionists at the front desk. Everything was immaculately clean and well-lit, but it lacked a certain frenzied bustle that you would find in other premium office buildings in Hong Kong.
The three grade A office towers with seven storeys each are part of the 11 Skies project, a 3.8 million square-foot megaproject that has been billed as Hong Kong’s largest indoor entertainment hub. Valued at HK$20 billion (US$2.57 billion), it was awarded to New World Development (NWD) for development and management in 2018.
This was just one piece of an aggressive expansion plan championed by former CEO Adrian Cheng Chi-kong, a third-generation scion at New World who was poised to take over from his father.
Last month, Cheng abruptly stepped down as CEO, surprising the market, and the company handed the job to a non-family member – chief operating officer Eric Ma Siu-cheung – after NWD reported a full-year loss of HK$19.7 billion, its biggest ever.
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Cheng, 44, became an executive vice-chairman and general manager in 2017 and was promoted in 2020 to executive vice-chairman and CEO, which made him the heir apparent to his father, chairman and executive director Henry Cheng Kar-shun. New World was founded in 1970 by the late jewellery magnate Cheng Yu-tung, Adrian’s grandfather. He will now serve as vice-chairman of the company, a non-executive role.
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