Kwok Tak-seng OBE (12 March 1911 – 30 October 1990) was a Hong Kong businessman. He was the

founder Founder or Founders may refer to: Places *Founders Park, a stadium in South Carolina, formerly known as Carolina Stadium * Founders Park, a waterside park in Islamorada, Florida Arts, entertainment, and media * Founders (''Star Trek''), the ali ...

Sun Hung Kai Properties Sun Hung Kai Properties Limited (SHKP; ) is a listed corporation and the largest property developer in Hong Kong as of 2019. The company is controlled by the Kwok family trust, largely the Kwok brothers. The Kwok family trust was set up by Kw ...

, one of the major

property developer Real estate development, or property development, is a business process, encompassing activities that range from the renovation and re-lease of existing buildings to the purchase of raw land and the sale of developed land or parcels to others. R ...

s in Hong Kong.

Early life

Kwok was born in Macau. The

ancestral home An ancestral home is the place of origin of one's extended family, particularly the home owned and preserved by the same family for several generations. The term can refer to an individual house or estate, or to a broader geographic area such as a ...

of the Kwok family was located in

Zhongshan Zhongshan (; ) is a prefecture-level city in the south of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province, China. As of the 2020 census, the whole city with 4,418,060 inhabitants is now part of the Guangzhou–Shenzhen conurbation with 65,565,622 ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

, formerly known as Xiangshan. He emigrated to Hong Kong after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Career

Kwok partnered with Fung King-hey and

Lee Shau-kee Lee Shau-kee GBM (; born 7 March 1928 in Shunde, Guangdong, China) is a Hong Kong business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is a real estate tycoon and majority owner of Henderson Land Development, a property conglomerate with inter ...

to establish Sun Hung Kai Enterprises, a predecessor of

in 1963. Sun Hung Kai Properties was publicly listed in Hong Kong in 1972 and soon became one of the top companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong by

market capitalisation Market capitalization, sometimes referred to as market cap, is the total value of a publicly traded company's outstanding common shares owned by stockholders. Market capitalization is equal to the market price per common share multiplied by t ...

. Kwok was appointed OBE in the 1986 Birthday Honours. Kwok also served as a non-executive director of fellow developer

New World Development New World Development Company Limited (NWD), is a Hong Kong-based company focused on property, hotels, infrastructure and services and department stores. It was established on 29 May 1970 by Cheng Yu-tung. The company is publicly listed on the ...

Personal life

Kwok married

Kwong Siu-hing Kwong Siu-hing, or sometimes Kwok Kwong Siu-hing (; born 2 December 1929), is the matriarch of the Kwok family. She controls the conglomerate Sun Hung Kai Properties, the largest property developer in Hong Kong as of 2019. As of 2008, Kwong effe ...

. They have three sons, Walter Kwok, Thomas Kwok, and Raymond Kwok. On 30 October 1990, Kwok died of a heart attack. Kwok was 79. Kwok was succeeded as chairman of Sun Hung Kai by his eldest son, Walter. In 2008, after a very public intra-family tussle, his wife Kwong Siu-hing became chairman.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kwok, Tak Seng 1911 births 1990 deaths Hong Kong billionaires Hong Kong real estate businesspeople New World Development people Officers of the Order of the British Empire