Hong Kong Tycoon's Ex Awarded $157 Mil. in Divorce
By wchung | 13 May, 2025

A Hong Kong real estate heir was ordered to pay his ex-wife one of the biggest divorce settlements ever awarded in a city known for its courts’ generosity to former wives.

Samathur Li was ordered by High court Justice John Saunders to pay Florence Tsang HK$1.22 billion ($157 mil), noting that the couple had lived a “lifestyle which was best described as just below that of a US-dollar billionaire”. He deemed the amount necessary to keep Tsang, a 38-year-old lawyer, in the comfort to which she had become accustomed. The couple had been married eight years.

The settlement gave Tsang a Hong Kong property worth HK$250 million ($33 mil.), a London property worth HK$30.53 mil. ($4 mil.), HK$3.5 mil. ($4.6 mil.) for cars, HK$5 mil. ($6.3 mil.) for a yacht and HK$4.6 mil. ($6.2 mil.) for club memberships in Hong Kong and Britain. Li was ordered to pay Tsang’s legal costs and a HK$26 mil. ($3.5 mil.) fund was ordered set up for the couple’s three-year-old daughter.

Saunders also noted that Li and his billionaire father, Samuel Tak Lee, appeared to have forged documents transferring the son’s assets to the father in a failed effort at shielding it from the divorce proceedings. He ordered a criminal investigation of the forgery.

The settlement amounts to about 20% of the couple’s assets. Tsang had demanded 55%. The ruling sealed “Hong Kong’s reputation as Asia’s divorce capital,” opined The Hong Kong Standard.

The decision produced “cheer and a broad smile” on Tsang’s face, according to the South China Morning Post.

“I’m delighted that the proceeding has now concluded,” she was quoted as saying at the court.

Tsang had alleged that the marriage had broken down after she had refused Li’s demand for her have an abortion. He then had an affair and saw his daughter only twice after she was born, according to her testimony.