ABSTRACT
I Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum, Asia’s richest woman, died in 2007. She was the chairwoman of privately held property giant Chinachem.1 Her personal assistant said of her: ‘She had been working in the office over the past few weeks. She also made the decisions on investments in allotments of new shares, and the recent purchase of land in the New Territories was done under her instructions’ (South China Morning Post 5 April 2007). Nina Wang preferred to be known as Chinachem’s chairlady. She had undergone a marathon legal battle with her father-in-law, Wang Din-shin (aged 96) to control the estate of her late husband, Teddy Wang. It included the Chinachem property empire. At the conclusion of legal proceedings she was cleared of forging Teddy Wang’s will. According to Forbes magazine’s 2007 rich list, Nina Wang was the 204th richest person in the world, with a net worth of HK$32.7 billion. There was much speculation about the distribution of her fortune. Soon after her death, a similar lawsuit commenced over her own estate and over the validity of her own will.
