Adrian Cheng, the 40-year-old Hong Kong heir reigns over an empire. Uninhibited inventor of the concept of installing a museum in the heart of a shopping center, he weaves the link between luxury and contemporary art. Discover in this article the essential to know about this billionaire.
A family fortune built on a jeweler empire
Welcome to the financial capital of 7 million inhabitants, where intense urban promiscuity rubs shoulders with unbridled real estate, where the price per square meter can reach 150,000 €. For now, a palpable excitement is spreading over the green carpet of the 21st-floor big kids’ lounge, the main target of the master of the house, Adrian Cheng. Eldest son and grandson of Hong Kong billionaires, the one everyone calls “Adrian” practices a visionary requirement. The family fortune in the local top 10 and 58th in the international ranking of Forbes was built on a Chow Tai Fook (CTF) jewelry empire, world leader with 5.3 billion euros in turnover and 2,400 stores, real estate and commercial, New World Development (NWD), turnover of 5.87 billion euros. The conglomerate is approaching 50,000 employees as its investments flood China and the world.
Adrian, respectively CEO of CTF, Executive Vice President of NWD and Founding President of K11, one of the most innovative companies in China, revisits the house assets by infusing them with culture and zenitude. Among the Chengs, each generation brings its stone to the building. Adrian, who joined the group in 2006 after an excellent university course with an art degree from Harvard, a cultural program from Stanford in Kyoto and an appropriate banking training (USB, Goldman Sachs), tackled the challenge of the third millennium by launching a cultural revolution dedicated to business.
Between luxury, culture and nature
A kind of improbable union between Mao and Rockefeller. Result, the heir who, younger, dreamed of being a tenor, dynamites the local business model with talent. Rather than validating financial results, Adrian the revolutionary is moving the lines. Precise, involved, sleeping little, he sends messages at all hours of the day and night to his teams, which he chooses young. He constantly travels to Myanmar, Siberia, and Singapore lately and multiplies the meetings. For ten years, this inventive person has been preparing the family group to become the entry platform for luxury brands in China. Its target : millennials, generation 1988-1994, added to Generation Z from 1995-2010, i.e. a future market of 566 million consumers, informed, versatile and without borders. Adrian the disruptive speaks to millennials and accompanies their way of life between luxury, culture and nature. After the Grand Helmsman, the Big Brother of the Bobos. The slogan that he erected in the DNA of his brand, The Artisanal Movement, promotes the know-how at the center of each of his projects.
The last one, the pharaonic Victoria Dockside 2.1 billion euros of investments, end of the construction site in 2019, where K11 Atelier is headquartered, redesigns the maritime facade of Hong Kong over nearly 28 hectares. Adrian aims to make it the new trendy heart of Hong Kong, with a district dedicated to art and design, surrounded by a Hollywood-style avenue of stars, designed by star landscaper James Corner, who designed the High Line of New York. There are offices, a Rosewood hotel, the brand, which owns the Crillon, is run by its little sister Sonia and a gigantic K11 Art Mall around the concept, a little curious in the eyes of Westerners, of works of art installed in the mall. At K11 in Shanghai in 2014, for three months, Adrian introduced 350,000 people to 40 paintings by Monet on loan from the Marmottan Museum, the largest exhibition in China of the impressionist and increased sales in the mall by 30%.