Logan Property’s Kei Hands Off CEO Role to Younger Brother

The chief executive officer of a Chinese property developer that has made headlines with its record bids for sites in Hong Kong and Singapore has stepped aside, but only to make way for a close family member. Logan Property’s CEO Kei Hoi Pang, who also goes by his Mandarin-name — Ji Haipeng — has relinquished the top executive title at his firm, but will retain his role as the company’s chairman, according to a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The new frontman at the Shenzhen-headquartered builder is Kei’s younger brother Ji Jiande, an executive director at the firm who will take over as the new chief executive. The move is intended “to enhance the Company’s corporate governance practices” and better comply with corporate governance rules for Hong Kong-listed firms, which provide that the chairman and CEO roles “should be separate and should not be performed by the same individual,” Logan Property said in the statement. The property developer was listed on the Hong Kong exchange in 2013.

Keeping It All in the Family

And Ji Jiande is not Kei’s only family member to have benefited from the chairman’s willingness to spread responsibility around. In 2014 Kei’s daughter, Perenna Kei became the world’s youngest billionaire after her dad bequeathed 85 percent of his company stock to the then 24-year-old heiress, pushing aside Facebook co-founder and Zuckerman buddy Dustin Moskovitz as the youngest person in the world to hit the billion-dollar mark.

Young Perenna’s fame faded after dad later took back control of the family trust.

Kei, as the founder and chairman of the company, was appointed CEO in 2011. The tycoon ranks as the fiftieth wealthiest man in China in 2017, with a net worth of $4.4 billion, according to the Forbes list of China’s Richest 2017. Kei more than doubled his total reported wealth last year, gaining him a spot among the top 100 richest individuals in China.

Before coming on board at Logan full time, Ji, the 43-year-old new CEO, was primarily responsible for Longfor Property’s business in Shantou, a coastal city in Guangdong province where the company was founded. He was also in charge of construction and material procurement for the developer.

Record-Breaking Land Bids

Established in 1996, Logan Property focusses on residential real estate in China and ranked 35th among the country’s developers for contracted sales in 2017. Despite its smaller scale, Logan Property grabbed media attention when it paid a record price of HK$16.86 billion ($2.17 billion) for a waterfront residential site on Hong Kong’s Ap Lei Chau island with fellow mainland developer KWG Property last February. The record was later broken by a Cheung Sha Wan site which was sold for $2.2 billion in November.

The Guangdong developer’s ambition did not stop at Hong Kong. Last October, Logan Property bought up the Florence Regency complex in Singapore for $462 million to redevelop the site into 1,446 homes. The purchase followed a record-breaking site bid in May, when the developer teamed up with Nanshan Group to purchase a residential site in Singapore for $722 million, the highest-ever bid for a real estate project in the island-state.