Hong Kong billionaire offers £40 million ($65M) marriage bounty for gay daughter
One of Hong Kong’s richest men has offered a reward of nearly £40 million to the man who can woo his lesbian daughter.
By Tom Phillips, Shanghai
6:44PM BST 26 Sep 2012
Cecil Chao Sze-tsung, a property magnate, announced the HK$500million bounty this week after reports that his daughter Gigi Chao, 33, a University of Manchester graduate, entered a civil partnership with her long-term girlfriend in France.
“I don’t mind whether he is rich or poor,” Mr Chao said. “The important thing is that he is generous and kind-hearted.”
Mr Chao also told the South China Morning Post that reports of his daughter’s civil ceremony were “false”.
The tycoon said he hoped to help the successful suitor could start a business. The reward was “an inducement to attract someone who has the talent but not the capital to start his own business”.
“Gigi is a very good woman with both talents and looks,” the doting father said. “She is devoted to her parents, is generous and does volunteer work.”
It was reported that Miss Chao entered the partnership with Sean Yeung, her girlfriend of seven years, who also uses the name Sean Eav, on April 4.
A photograph on Miss Chao’s Facebook page confirmed that she and her girlfriend flew to France two days earlier. “Going to Paris to buy a few businesses,” read the caption to a picture apparently taken in the first-class section of a plane.
The Facebook profile of Miss Chao, an architecture graduate, reads: “Helicopter pilot. Social entrepreneur. Creator of expressions in colour and emotion.” It also describes her as an executive director at her father’s Hong Kong-based property firm, Cheuk Nang.
Miss Chao’s profile for the networking website LinkedIn says she worked with the British architect Sir Terry Farrell for two years.
She now runs Haut Monde Talent, a model management and PR firm with an office on Hong Kong’s Hennessy Road.
Mr Chao’s search for a husband for his daughter appeared to contradict a description Miss Chao gave of her father in a 2007 interview.
“My father took a hands-off approach in parenting,” she told HK Magazine. “I see him as a friend more than a father. My parents never pressure me with high expectations.”
It also exposed a traditional streak in a man known for his playboy way of life. Mr Chao made headlines in 2003 when his Rolls-Royce caught fire while he and his girlfriend were inside. The tycoon has never married and once claimed to have had “intimate relations” with about 10,000 women. This week he denied that he would force his daughter to marry a man.
Miss Chao has yet to comment on her father’s offer but her Facebook and Twitter accounts have been bombarded by people keen to become her friend. “No longer accepting Facebook friend requests … sorry,” she wrote. “Where do all these people come from? Jerusalm [sic]? Ethiopia? Istanbul? ridiculous. It’s also quite scarey [sic] that my friend requests number keeps jumping up every few seconds.”
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