Hong Kong’s ‘screens king’ of Biel Crystal snaps up Peak mansions in HK$1.1 billion sale

Yeung Kin-man, who founded the world’s largest producer of smartphone glass screens, has emerged as the buyer of four mansions on The Peak of Hong Kong in a HK$1.1 billion (US$141 million) distressed sale, according to the city’s Land Registry.

Grand Tai Enterprises (HK) Development, a nominee company that counts Yeung and his wife Lam Wai-ying as shareholders, bought the town houses A through D at No 46 Plantation Road on The Peak on Thursday, according to the records.

The four town houses, each measuring between 4,060 and 4,432 sq ft (411.8 square metres), were put up for sale by the family of Ho Shung-pun, a low-key clan of real estate developers in Hong Kong, at a 35-per cent discount to market prices to repay debt, sources familiar with the matter told The Post last month.

The transaction price works out to about HK$65,000 per square foot, about 50 per cent less than their valuation at the height of Hong Kong’s property market in 2017, according to Savills, which brokered the deal.

Plantation Road is located on The Peak in Hong Kong, one of the most exclusive addresses in Asia. Each of the three-storey town houses comes with a swimming pool, and a view of Victoria Harbour.

The town houses on 46 Plantation Road, completed in 2007, were put up for sale by tender in February 2023 after Ho encountered liquidity stress, sources said. The family obtained a one-year HK$85 million loan on January 17 from X8 Finance, a wholly owned unit of Hong Kong-listed Termbray Industries International, a stock exchange filing showed.

The loan, carrying an annual interest rate of 29 per cent in the first two months of its drawdown, and 18 per cent thereafter, used another Ho family property as collateral. The loan was taken out to refinance a HK$44 million facility taken out in June 2023 that carried an interest rate of 25 per cent per annum in the first month, and 13 per cent thereafter.