Ho Family Fights Over Empire From Gambling to Graves

From the moment visitors board the plane or ferry to Macau, to lunch at the city’s three-Michelin-star restaurant, to a turn on the world’s highest urban bungee jump, they put money into the pockets of billionaire Stanley Ho.

And that’s before tourists hit the casinos. Ho’s four-decade monopoly on gambling until 2002 in the former Portuguese colony allowed him to build a business that covers virtually every facet of Macau’s economy. Even with competition from rivals such as Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Steve Wynn’s Wynn Resorts Ltd., the Ho family takes more than 50 cents of every dollar bet in the Chinese enclave.