Fugitive Hong Kong billionaire auctions dozens of Hermes bags
text_fields
Joseph Lau, a Hong Kong-based billionaire sold several luxury handbags in an auction by Sotheby's for $3.2 million.
The event was named the first part of a visionary collection of Joseph Lau and it ended up being the largest single-owner handbag sale in Asia's auction market. One Chanel bag and 75 Hermes bags including six diamond Birkins and a rare bronze metallic Kelly were sold. The most expensive item was a 2006 Bleu Jean Shiny Porosus Crocodile Birkin 25 with 18-karat white gold and diamond hardware. It was sold for HK$1.52 million, said the post on Sotheby's website.
A representative for Lau said he has brought over 1,500 Hermes bags as gifts and his family still has over 1,000 products from the luxury brand. Part of the proceedings from the auction will be given to charity but it was not revealed how much.
The 71-year-old once bought his daughter a 12-carat blue diamond for 48.6 million Swiss francs ($52.9 million) in 2015 which was a record at the time. He is known for collecting art and currently owns "Mao" by Andy Warhol and "Everything Must Go" by Jean-Michel Basquiat. He plans displaying them in his upcoming art gallery in London.
Lau is also the former chairman of Hong Kong developer Chinese Estates Holdings Ltd, one of the companies hit hard by the property crisis in China. He currently has a net worth of $6 billion and has lost $2 billion since the second half of 2021, says the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He has offloaded around $177 million in various collections since early 2020 including a David Hockney painting, Chinese antiques, and wine.
In 2014, he was convicted of bribery and money laundering in Macau. But he never served jail time due to the no-extradition pact between Macau and Hong Kong.