Background and career
Lui Che Woo, GBM, GBS, MBE, JP (Chinese: 呂志和; 9 August 1929 – 7 November 2024) was a Hong Kong business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He founded K. Wah Company in 1955, which later became a multinational conglomerate, K. Wah Group. The group has two listed flagships, K. Wah International Holdings Limited and Galaxy Entertainment Group Limited, as well as major companies such as K. Wah Construction Materials Limited and Stanford Hotels International, and over 200 subsidiaries around the world. K. Wah Group is engaged in various businesses including properties, entertainment and leisure, hospitality and construction materials across Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Southeast Asia and major cities in the world. Lui Che-woo was the Chairman of K.Wah Group and the Galaxy Entertainment Group. He established the LUI Che Woo Prize – Prize for World Civilisation, which strives for harmony and betterment of humanity while preserving Mother Earth. Adhering to his belief in “giving back to society”, especially in promoting the education of young people and paying attention to the development of science and technology, Lui Che-woo donated for decades to numerous universities in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and overseas, as well as helping the underprivileged. To recognise Lui’s long-standing social and charitable contributions, the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has named the asteroid 5538 the “Lui Che Woo Star”.
Born on 9 August 1929 in Jiangmen, Guangdong Province, Mainland China, Lui Che-woo moved to Hong Kong with his family at the age of four, and like many children his age, was forced to drop out of school during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. In the 1940s, at the age of 13, Lui Che-woo first took up entrepreneurship as a food manufacturer and distributor in Yau Ma Tei. After the war, he learned to run an auto parts business with his uncle. Five or six years later, Lui established his own brand for auto parts trading.
The 1950s and 1960s were an important post-war period for Hong Kong’s economic and social development, and Lui Che-woo took this opportunity to explore broader business prospects. In the early 1950s, he travelled to Okinawa, Japan, to solicit the US Army and Consulate to sell him heavy equipment left behind in Okinawa after the Korean War. This equipment included heavy goods vehicles and drilling machines, which he later shipped back to Hong Kong for infrastructure and construction work. This visionary initiative laid a crucial foundation for Lui’s future career development. In 1955, Lui Che-woo founded K. Wah Company in Hong Kong to participate in large-scale land reclamation projects in and around Kwun Tong District, including Sau Mau Ping, Lok Fu, Lam Tin and Yau Tong. Since then, K. Wah Company has remained an undisputed leader in Hong Kong’s construction materials sector, and Lui Che-woo has become known as the “King of the Quarry” in the industry. In the 1960s, Lui Che-woo successfully secured the right to quarry at the Anderson Road Quarry Site, which was the first rock quarry site in Hong Kong. Lui had the foresight to embrace new technologies and used automated equipment to replace the manual mining of the time. In 1997, the K. Wah Company signed a 17-year contract with the HKSAR Government to rehabilitate the quarry into a multi-purpose development site. Lui Che-woo's construction materials business greatly contributed to shaping Hong Kong's urban areas. Concurrent with such contributions, his business has lead the development of efficient, safe, mechanised quarrying. K. Wah Construction Materials Limited was listed in Hong Kong in 1991 (00027, currently one of the subsidiaries of Galaxy Entertainment Group Limited) and has become the largest one-stop building materials company in the city. Lui Che-woo began to invest in property development in the 1960s. Over the years, Lui’s property development projects have expanded from Hong Kong to Mainland China, Macau, Southeast Asia, and major cities worldwide. In 1987, K. Wah International Holding Limited, founded by Lui, was listed in Hong Kong. At the beginning of Mainland China's reform and opening up, Lui Che-woo was one of the first Hong Kong entrepreneurs in the construction materials industry to enter the market. He participated in Guangzhou's first urban renewal project, transforming old buildings in Yuexiu District into a modern large-scale residential and commercial community known as Parkview Palace. In addition, Lui Che-woo was among the first Hong Kong entrepreneurs to invest in the Shanghai property market, acquiring a number of sites in prime locations in the city centre. After years of hard work, K. Wah Group has expanded its business to ten mainland cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Kunming, Shenzhen, and Zhuhai, with investments worth tens of billions of RMB.
Land reclamation on the outskirts of Hong Kong played an important role in the city’s development. Lui Che-woo had a vision and confidence in local economic development and acquired a reclaimed harbour-view site in Tsim Sha Tsui East for the development of his first hotel. At the time, Tsim Sha Tsui East was a newly developed area with limited economic activity, but Lui believed that the district needed international star-rated hotels to accommodate future growth. Upon the hotel's completion, he delegated the management of the hotel to a foreign group and recruited professional hotel management personnel from Germany. During the 1980s and 1990s, Lui Che-woo focused on the hotel business and property development in the United States. His companies partnered with internationally renowned hotel brands such as InterContinental, Marriott, Sheraton, Hilton, etc., while training local management talent. He also established a high-end serviced apartment brand, Stanford Residences, and introduced a modern and systematic management system. In the 1970s, Lui Che-woo owned the property and operating rights to nearly twenty hotels in the United States, making him one of the top twelve hotel owners in the country. In addition, he owned and operated dozens of hotels and serviced apartments worldwide, earning him the nickname "Hotel Tycoon".
In 2002, Macau opened up its gaming market and the Macau Government issued three gaming operation licences through a bidding process. Among 18 world-class rivals, Lui Che-woo's Galaxy Entertainment Group won one of the three gaming concessions in Macau. The Group's successful corporate management and extensive experience in the hospitality industry made it the first gaming company to be listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong in 2006. Lui Che-woo steered the Group's development towards the entertainment and leisure industry, and in the same year, StarWorld Hotel became a new landmark in Macau when it opened its doors. In 2011, Galaxy Entertainment Group launched the first phase of Galaxy Macau, an integrated resort. In May 2015, Galaxy Macau Phase 2 and Broadway Macau were opened respectively, bringing the total area of the integrated resort to more than 1.1 million square metres. In 2022, Galaxy Entertainment Group was granted a new 10-year gaming concession contract by the Macau Government, thus becoming one of six gaming companies in Macau. In 2023, Galaxy Entertainment Group expanded its non-gaming business with the launch of the third phase of the Cotai project, including the launch of the Galaxy International Convention Centre and Galaxy Arena. Construction of the fourth phase of the new integrated resort project is underway, which will expand Galaxy Entertainment Group's footprint in Cotai to two million square metres. Notably, Galaxy Entertainment Group has also strategically partnered with Monte-Carlo SBM, so as to extend its business reach to Hengqin, Zhuhai.
In 2015, Lui Che-woo founded the LUI Che Woo Prize – Prize for World Civilisation to recognise individuals and groups who have made significant contributions to the progress of world civilisation, sustainable development, the welfare of mankind and the promotion of peace and benevolence in various fields. This bold initiative is supported by the world's top scholars and social elites. Laureates of the Prize include Yuan Longping (袁隆平, 2016 Sustainability Prize, known as the "Father of Hybrid Rice", his research on high-yield hybrid rice technology could solve the problem of food shortage in China), Xie Zhenhua (解振華, 2017 Sustainability Prize, contributed to the achievement of the 2015 Paris Agreement), Fan Jinshi (樊錦詩, 2019 Positive Energy Prize, lifelong focus on the conservation of cultural heritage in the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes), Jennifer A. Doudna (2019 Welfare Betterment Prize, co-inventor of the genome engineering tool CRISPR-Cas9, also one of the Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry).
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
