Kwoks on top with US$35.6b as rich families slide in rankings

Cici Cao

Five of Hong Kong wealthiest families are on the Bloomberg list of Asia's 20 Richest Families of 2025, but most of their rankings slid from the previous year.

The Kwok family, who own Sun Hung Kai Properties (0016), was rated Hong Kong's richest with an estimated net worth of US$35.6 billion (HK$277.60 billion), though their ranking fell by one spot to fifth place.

The Cheng family, who own New World Development (0017) and Chow Tai Fook Jewellery (1929), ranked 12th with US$21.8 billion, down three spots.

The report said that the Chengs are currently being rocked by a crisis of confidence, with New World Development battling debt restructuring concerns and plummeting bond prices.

The Li Ka-shing family of CK Hutchison (0001) and the Lee Shau-kee family of Henderson Land Development (0012) did not make the list, as the ranking excludes first-generation entrepreneurial families.

Chinese tech tycoons such as Tencent (0700) co-founder Pony Ma Huateng and Alibaba (9988) co-founder Jack Ma Yun are also absent from the list.

Other Hong Kong families on the list include the Pao/Woo family of Wheelock and BW Group, who slipped from 11th to 14th place with an estimated US$19.6 billion, the Kadoorie family of CLP Holdings (0002), who held onto the 16th spot with US$17.1 billion, and the Lee family of Lee Kum Kee, down from 17th to the 20th place with US$15 billion.

The report said that with US president Donald Trump already rattling the globe with diplomatic broadsides, the threat of sweeping tariffs and more, the next four years are unlikely to pass quietly for Asia's richest families.

It also noted that several families on the list had past interactions with Trump. Hong Kong's Kwoks and the 15th-ranked Kweks from Singapore and Malaysia crossed paths with Trump when he was seeking a buyer for New York's Plaza Hotel in the 1990s, decades before his first term before the Kweks ultimately bought the hotel together with a Saudi royal.

The Chengs once helped rescue Trump from financial difficulty by buying a swath of land on Manhattan's Hudson River shore together with other wealthy investors, according to the report.

Meanwhile, the Ambani family of India's Reliance Industries, ranked number one on the list, was invited to attend Trump's inauguration last month.

In terms of other regional representation, two families from Thailand made the list, while mainland China, Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore, and the Philippines each have one family represented.