1) Sabrina Ho, daughter of casino magnate Stanley Ho, is helping Macau diversify its economy away from reliance on casinos through cultural initiatives like art fairs and auctions. 2) Her company organized Macau's first auction by Chinese state-owned Poly Auction and an annual hotel art fair to attract more cultural tourists and develop the art market. 3) While casinos continue to open, pressure is growing from China to find new sources of revenue as policies discourage gambling and the economy slows, making Sabrina's efforts to promote art and culture timely.

1. Sabrina Ho looks to Macau art fairs and
auctions to diversify economy away from
casinos
As pressure grows on Macau to find new sources of revenue, scion of casino dynasty
imagines a different future for the other SARMORE ON
Sabrina Ho, the daughter of casino magnate Stanley Ho.
Sabrina Ho Chiu-yeng is doing what she can to help Macau diversify. The 26-year-old
daughter of Stanley Ho Hung-sun may be better known for gracing society and
entertainment pages, but in January she organised the first Macau sales by China’s state-
owned Poly Auction and then in November held her own annual hotel art fair, having
already launched an exhibition to promote the work of young art graduates in September.
“Macau is changing,” she tells The Collector. “We don’t want to rely just on the gaming
industry. We want more families to come here for holidays, we want to boost our cultural
and creative industries.”
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This is a politically correct view for the daughter of a casino magnate. Macau is in the cross
hairs of Beijing’s war on corruption and capital outflow. The central government started
urging the city to quit its addiction to the gaming sector, the taxes from which pay for most
public expenditures, back during the boom years, when the “build it and they will come”

2. mentality ruled the casino industry. Today, mainland policies to discourage high rollers
combined with a slowing economy have increased the pressure to find new revenues.
Sabrina Ho acts as auctioneer at a Poly Auction Macau sale.
Fundamental change has been slow to come. Five casinos have opened since 2012 and
more are on the way, including two from branches of the Ho empire – the Grand Lisboa
Palace, led by Ho’s mother, Angela Leong On-kei (Stanley’s so-called “fourth wife”), and
MGM Cotai, headed by Sabrina Ho’s half-sister Pansy Ho Chiu-king.
So are Sabrina’s cultural endeavours all just a bit of soft public relations for the clan?
Well, China’s biggest auction house is treating her seriously, and hopes her youthful
energy and family connections can help it break into a new and wealthy market where no
international house has a presence. In return, Ho says, she wants the auctions to help
attract tourists and perhaps encourage the city’s 600,000 residents to develop more of an
interest in culture. The partnership, called Poly Auction Macau, is 51 per cent owned by
Poly and the rest by Ho’s company, Chiu Yeng Culture.
Macau’s secret world of rare and acclaimed works of art
Ho grew up surrounded by art and other collectables owned by her parents but she is fairly
new to the auctions business. After graduating with an arts degree from the University of
Hong Kong, in 2013, she worked on the branding and marketing side of the family’s hotel
and property businesses. “But I like art and I asked Poly if I could work part time at their
Hong Kong office, to learn about the auction world,” she says.

3. Wu Guanzhong’s Snowscape in Beijing (1975) went
under Poly Auction Macau’s hammer for HK$29
million.
The former intern is now chief executive of
Poly Auction Macau, and charged with
forging a new path for a large, state-owned
Chinese company in a dreary economy.
The results of the second sales, at the end
of last month, were mixed. About HK$170
million of sales were made in four separate
auctions of 200 lots. There were highlights,
such as the HK$29 million hammer price for
Wu Guanzhong’s Snowscape in
Beijing (1975), but only a quarter of the lots
in the Chinese ceramics and works of art
sale on November 25 found buyers. Modern
and contemporary Asian art did better, with
73 per cent of the lots sold; however, those
sales achieved only 39 per cent of the value
of the auction’s presale estimates.
Remarkably, all the whisky, jewellery,
watches and handbags were snatched up.
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“Macau buyers tend to be more interested in contemporary art and jewellery,” Ho says.
“There are collectors of traditional Chinese paintings but there is probably more potential in
seeking out new collectors of contemporary and modern art here.”
In any case, it’s not just about the money, she says. “My company has started an annual
showcase, called the Y Show, to promote new Macau artists and designers. We invite
major international companies like Facebook and Tencent to come and see if they want to
hire some of them. I also see myself as a culture ambassador. Yes, running auctions is a
business but if you add lots of elements around them, you can raise them to a different
level that can influence many more people,” she says.
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La Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau, founded by Ho’s father, has always had
a portfolio covering many aspects of tourism – hotels, a stake in Macau’s airport and Air

4. Macau, hydrofoils from Hong Kong and even a tourist landmark, Macau Tower. But,
historically, these are seen as subsidiaries that help to bring gamblers to the company’s
casinos.
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No longer, Ho says. In an era when the gaming industry is hobbled by overcapacity, she is
turning a family-owned hotel into a mini art hub instead of a casino resort.
“I am helping my mother reposition the Regency Hotel, which we have renamed the Regency Art
Hotel,” Ho says. “This is where we have the hotel art fair and the auctions. This is the new way of
doing things.”