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Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index

⬅ # 136 Uday Kotak|# 138 John Doerr ➡

# 137 Joseph Lau 

$13.8B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 7/2/2024
-$11.5M (-0.08%)

# 137 Joseph Lau 

$13.8B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 7/2/2024
-$11.5M (-0.08%)
OccupationOwner, Chinese Estates Group
Source of WealthReal Estate
Age72
ResidenceHong Kong, Hong Kong
Marital StatusDivorced
Children6
Age-Adjusted Net Worth$6.14B
Joseph Lau
Joseph Lau
Hong Kong
Net worth: $13.8B

Self-Made Score 

Wealth History

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Biography

Overview

Joseph Lau Luen-hung, born on 21 July 1951 in Hong Kong, is a Hong Kong billionaire.
In 1974, he joined his family's business, initially involved in electric fan manufacturing.
In 1982, he renamed the family company to Evergo Industrial Enterprise, later focusing on investment-holding and property-management services.
Lau acquired a 43% stake in Chinese Estates Holdings in 1986, becoming the majority shareholder and expanding real estate investments through acquisitions.
In 2000, he acquired a 67% stake in Chi Cheung Investment.
Chinese Estates Holdings developed The ONE, the tallest retail complex in Hong Kong, gifted to his wife and children in 2017.
In March 2014, Lau resigned as chairman and CEO after a Macau court convicted him of bribery and money laundering, making him a convicted felon and fugitive.
Lau's son, Lau Ming-wai, succeeded him as the chairman of the company.

Art and Wine Collections

Lau is an avid art collector, ranking among ARTnews's 'Top 200 Collectors.'
His art collection is valued at around $1 billion, including works by Basquiat, Warhol, Gauguin, and Hockney.
He owns over 10,000 bottles of red wine, with sales of his French wines at Sotheby's in Hong Kong exceeding expectations in 2020.

Personal Life

Lau married Po Wing-kam in 1977, and they divorced in 1992, having two children.
He has five additional children with two women concurrently, two with Yvonne Lui and three with Kimbee Chan (Chan Hoi-wan).
In 2007, Lau was among the first seven purchasers of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet for private use.
He bought a 7.03 carat blue diamond named the 'Star of Josephine' for $9.5 million in 2009.
In 2015, Lau set records by buying a 16.08 carat pink diamond for $28.5 million and a 12.03 carat blue diamond for $48.4 million, renaming them the 'Sweet Josephine' and the 'Blue Moon of Josephine.'
Lau married Kimbee Chan in December 2016, and in 2017, citing health issues, he transferred 75% of his shares in Chinese Estates to his new wife and son.

Legal Issues

In 2014, Lau and Steven Lo were found guilty of bribery and money laundering charges in Macau, leading to Lau's five-year prison sentence.
Despite appeals, Lau remains a fugitive at large, evading extradition due to the absence of an extradition treaty between Macau and Hong Kong.

How long would it take you to become as rich as Joseph Lau?

If you started with $10,000 and invested an additional $500 each month at a 44.06% CAGR, it would take you 5 years to reach Joseph Lau's net worth of $13.8B.

Is this realistic? It depends how closely the VIX-TA-Macro Advanced model performs to its history in the future. Since Grizzly Bulls launched on January 1, 2022, it's returned 48.24% compared to 16.19% for the S&P 500 benchmark.

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Joseph Lau is very wealthy, but what's stopping you from reaching that same level of success? As summarized in our five fundamental rules to wealth building, becoming wealthy in a modern capitalist economy is not complicated. There's actually only three variables:

  1. Your starting capital
  2. Your earnings after expenses
  3. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of your savings

Most people start with zero or very little, so if you weren't born into wealth, don't fret! The majority of the fortunate folks listed in our Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index came from middle class or lower backgrounds. The most distinguishing characteristic of the group is their ability to consistently earn a high CAGR on their savings.

Every billionaire has a unique strategy to achieve high CAGR. For Joseph Lau, Real Estate is the primary source. Whether you choose to invest your savings in your own businesses or the businesses of others is not as important. The salient piece of the puzzle is ensuring that your hard-earned savings are generating sufficient CAGR to reach your long term goals.

Most people simply invest their money in index funds and call it a day. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it guarantees relative mediocrity. To achieve greatness, you need to invest your money to earn higher than average returns. In the long run, better investors will always finish ahead of better earners.

Source: Grizzly Bulls reporting

Methodology: Grizzly Bulls' Billionaires Index is a daily ranking of the world's billionaires and richest people. Grizzly Bulls strives to provide the most accurate net worth calculations available. We pull data from public equity markets, SEC filings, public real estate records, and other reputable sources.

The index is dynamic and updates daily at the close of U.S. stock market trading based on changes in the markets, economy, and updates to Grizzly Bulls' proprietary algorithm of personal wealth calculation. Stakes in public companies are tracked daily based on the relevant closing prices of the underlying securities. Additionally, stakes in private companies, cash, real estate, and other less easily valued assets are updated periodically through careful analysis of insider transactions, comparable public company sales / EBITDA multiples, etc.

Edited by: Lee Bailey