CHINA:After a life characterised by eccentric money moves, epic legal battles and unconventional behaviour, Hong Kong's glitterati must have seen this one coming.
Asia's richest woman, Nina Wang, who died earlier this month, has left her billions to her feng shui adviser. Even in death, Ms Wang, a strange figure with her schoolgirl skirts, bobby socks and pigtails, who died on April 3rd leaving an enormous property fortune and an unsolved kidnapping and murder mystery, will keep Hong Kong's barristers busy.
"In her will, dated October 16th 2006, the late Nina Wang bequeathed all her estate to Mr Chan Chun-chuen," her lawyer stated in a notice published in several Hong Kong newspapers yesterday.
No one knew who Mr Chan was until local newspapers reported that he was Ms Wang's fortune-teller, who took care of her feng shui needs. Feng shui, which translates as "wind and water", is an ancient Chinese philosophical belief in natural links to physical wellbeing. It is enormously popular in Hong Kong.
Ms Wang spent much of her declining years in the territory's law courts fighting a legal battle with her father-in-law over her husband Teddy's legacy. Childhood sweethearts from Shanghai, they had no children.
Teddy Wang disappeared after he was kidnapped leaving the Hong Kong Jockey Club in 1990. He was declared dead nine years later and the internecine war over his financial legacy was the most brutal Hong Kong had ever witnessed.
Mr Wang's father, Wang Din-shin (96), campaigned hard to have his son declared dead so that the estate could be settled.
In 1999, Wang Din-shin succeeded in having his son's death declared, and he launched a civil suit to claim his inheritance, but the matter was complicated by the fact that there were two, possibly three, wills.
In one will, from 1968, Teddy left his father everything. His father said that this will was written after he had told his son of his wife's infidelity with a warehouse manager. Furious at this, Mr Wang tore up an earlier 1960 will which split his fortune between his wife and his father.
Ms Wang won the eight-year legal battle in 2005, securing full control of the estate and of Hong Kong's largest private property developer, the Chinachem group.