By Farah Master

Macau, a special administrative region like Hong Kong, is the only place in China where casinos are legal, and the business has grown at an astounding pace since 2001, when the government ended the four-decade gambling monopoly of the Hong Kong billionaire Stanley Ho.

Ho had been nicknamed variously Godfather and King of Gambling, reflecting the government-granted monopoly he held on the Macau gambling industry for 75 years. His wealth was divided among his daughter, Pansy Ho ($5.3 billion) 1 who owns MGM Macau, fourth wife Angela Leong ($4.1 billion) 2 who is managing director of SJM Holdings, and son. Stanley Ho, the entrepreneur who built a casino empire that dominated Macau, has died. Once the richest man in Asia, Ho died on Tuesday in Hong Kong’s Sanatorium Hospital. Ho had been nicknamed variously Godfather and King of Gambling, reflecting the government-granted monopoly he held on the Macau gambling industry for 75 years. His wealth was divided among his daughter, Pansy Ho ($5.3 billion) 1 who owns MGM Macau, fourth wife Angela Leong ($4.1 billion) 2 who is managing director of SJM Holdings, and son.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Macau gambling king Stanley Ho, who built a business empire from scratch in the former Portuguese colony and became one of Asia's richest men, died on Tuesday at the age of 98.

The flamboyant tycoon, who loved to dance and advised his nearest and dearest to shun gambling, headed one of the world's most lucrative gaming businesses through his flagship firm, SJM Holdings, valued at about $6 billion.

Shielded from challengers by a four-decade monopoly on gambling, Ho helped transform Macau from a sleepy peninsula dotted with seedy, windowless gambling dens into the world's biggest casino centre.

But Ho's interests in Macau, on the coast of southeast China across the mouth of the Pearl River opposite Hong Kong, were not limited to the roulette wheels and baccarat tables.

His privately held company, Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau, or STDM, has stakes in everything from luxury hotels to helicopters and horse racing.

Ho lost his gambling monopoly in 2002 when Macau was opened up to competition, three years after the enclave returned to Chinese rule. STDM's main asset, SJM, is facing increasing competition from the other five licensed operators in Macau including U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson's Sands China.

U.S. regulators said Ho was linked to triads, or criminal gangs, which he denied. However, Ho earned the adoration of many Hong Kong and Macau residents for his swashbuckling business style and his philanthropic work.

He spearheaded what is known in Macau as the junket VIP system, whereby middlemen act on behalf of casinos by extending credit to gamblers and taking responsibility for collecting debts.

Flitting between Hong Kong and Macau by helicopter, the dapper Ho loved tennis and ballroom dancing - his fourth wife was a dance teacher - well into his 80s. He courted the limelight and frequently graced the celebrity gossip columns.

He had four wives and 17 known children, and was forced to restructure his business after a legal battle erupted within the family in 2012 over his fortune.

'POOR MAN'

Born in Hong Kong in 1921 and related to the wealthy Ho Tung family of Chinese and European descent, Ho's privileged upbringing was short-lived. At 13, his father lost everything in the stock market and fled to Vietnam, abandoning his wife and children.

Ho was determined to succeed and earned a place at the University of Hong Kong. Though World War Two intervened, his luck held. He left school and worked for seven days for the Air Raid Service Department before the Japanese captured Hong Kong.

'I earned HK$10 out of the seven days .. then I went to Macau,' he once told Reuters in an interview.

'I was a very poor man,' he said. 'I started with only HK$10. That was my capital.'

He got a job with the Macau government, bartering goods with the Japanese. The experience led to his own trading company and he became a millionaire.

In the early 1960s, he bid for the Macau gaming monopoly being offered by the Portuguese in its largely forgotten Asian outpost.

Ho won the concession, built a harbour, added high-speed boats to lure Hong Kong's avid gamblers and created the cash cow that made his empire possible.

As a result of the company restructuring that followed the family legal battle, Ho dropped off the ranks of Hong Kong's richest people for the first time in many years.

Angela Leong, his fourth wife and a co-chairperson at SJM, has seen her net worth jump to $4.1 billion, according to Forbes.

Some of Ho's children have become successful gaming operators in their own right. Daughter Pansy is the co-chairperson of MGM Resorts' Macau unit, while son Lawrence runs Melco Resorts & Entertainment.

Among his other children, Josie, born to Ho's second wife, has forged a career as a movie star, appearing in the 2011 thriller 'Contagion'.

SJM's most lavish casino, the 12-year-old Grand Lisboa, a 48-story building shaped like a lotus flower, remains one of Macau's most prominent destinations.

But, ironically, the casino king did not gamble.

'I have always told my children and my good friends: 'For God's sake, never gamble heavily and if you can avoid it, don't ever gamble',' he told the Far Eastern Economic Review in 1999.

(Additional reporting by James Pomfret, Clare Jim, Donny Kwok; Editing by Stephen Coates, Anne Marie Roantree and Christian Schmollinger)

now reading: Casino Mogul Stanley Ho Leaves Behind Crucial Economic Insights

Back in 1991, and while on a Semester at Sea (SAS) voyage as a student, SAS's S.S. Universe ship docked in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor. Notable about Hong Kong is that SAS was founded by a prominent businessman from there by the name of C.Y. Tung. His goal with this highly unique semester abroad program was to promote greater global understanding among young people from around the world.

Hong Kong on its own was a revelation. Everywhere you looked you saw gleaming, extraordinarily tall buildings. This formerly depressed city had morphed into the financial capital of Asia. Crucial about the why behind Hong Kong was that it was a wholly free city. No red tape. Other than tariffs on cars and tobacco, the city was a completely duty-free zone. Which at least partially explained its staggering wealth.

You see, Hong Kong the city-state was fully open to the world’s production even though the rest of the world wasn’t fully open to Hong Kong’s. Yet the city-state thrived despite this most “un-level” of playing fields. Except that the joke is on those who would conclude just that. In truth, those operating in the most open of markets are always in the most advantageous of positions. They have the whole world lined up to meet their needs, and they can take in the world’s production without paying taxes on it. Which explains why openness to foreign plenty just “partially” explains great wealth.

What helps complete the picture has to do with what it means for people who can consume the world’s production tax free. Precisely because they can, they can specialize their work. Since others are producing for them, Hong Kongers have the greatest odds of doing the work that most complements their skill sets. And when people are doing what uniquely elevates them, they’re much more productive in concert with a much greater capacity for work.

After that, Hong Kong is a rock. No natural resources other than free people working in frenzied fashion. If government ever tried to tax away their production, the source of Hong Kong’s wealth – the people – would leave.

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As for the use of “was” with regard to Hong Kong, unknown is whether its past freedoms will remain. A part of China since 1997 after 156 years of incredibly hands-off British rule, lately Beijing has begun asserting its sovereignty. Some in Hong Kong are protesting. Hopefully Chinese leadership understands that Hong Kong is an important symbol to the rest of the world of the genius of freedom and free markets. It would be sad on many levels for the world to lose this shining symbol, and it would similarly be sad for China. Brilliant as the country’s modern rise has been, Hong Kong at some level must

Macau Casino Owner Ho