Council overseeing estate of Hong Kong’s Nina Wang to be set up by quarter end

Secretary for Justice Paul Lam says he has started looking for suitable members of council for trustee for more than HK$140 billion estate

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The main asset of Nina Wang’s estate is its shareholding in Chinachem Group. Photo: SCMP

Published: 5:46pm, 19 Feb 2025Updated: 7:17pm, 19 Feb 2025

A council for the trustee for the more than HK$140 billion (US$18 billion) estate of Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum could be set up next month, potentially ending a decade-long legal saga and allowing the late tycoon’s final wishes to be fulfilled, Hong Kong’s justice minister has said.

Secretary for Justice Paul Lam Ting-kwok told lawmakers on Wednesday that he had started looking for suitable council members, who would be responsible for ensuring the estate supported charitable works and public services.

The council will be expected to implement one of Wang’s wishes as laid out in her will, which is to set up “a fund and a Chinese prize of worldwide significance similar to that of the Nobel Prize”.

Lam said he was aware legal proceedings had dragged on since the Court of Final Appeal ruled in 2015 that the then secretary for justice and the Chinachem Charitable Foundation needed to come up with a plan to fulfil Wang’s final wishes.

“I am fully confident that we can kick-start the relevant operations that everyone has been looking forward to for a long time,” the minister told legislators.

“I believe we are going for the goal.”

Last month, Lam appointed former Legislative Council president Rita Fan Hsu Lai-tai, ex-Monetary Authority CEO Joseph Yam Chi-kwong and former Baptist University council chairman Cheng Yan-kee to serve as members of a supervisory managing organisation that would handle the trustee’s operations.