9-11 Staunton Street is located a few doors from the outdoor escalator in Central’s Soho area (Image: Savills)
A Hong Kong investor whose property portfolio was once estimated to be worth HK$15 billion (US$1.9 billion) is disposing of a building in Central district’s Soho nightlife area at nearly half off his 2024 asking price.
Known colloquially as the “Ten Billion Shop King” for compiling one of the city’s largest caches of street shop and retail properties over the last three decades, Lai Wing-to has agreed to sell 9-11 Staunton Street for HK$105 million ($13.4 million), according to records filed with the city’s Land Registry last month.
The buyer is Johor-based conglomerate SKS Group, which has businesses spanning property development, hospitality and credit finance across Malaysia and Australia, according to the records.
Lai, who had listed the property at HK$200 million in a sale effort in January 2024, is offloading the asset at a 47.5 percent markdown from that asking price as Central’s retail property market continues to recover, with vacancy in the district falling to a record low of 1.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to an index compiled by CBRE.
Nightlife Hotspot
The asset being picked up by SKS Group, which is led by low-profile Malaysian businessman Alan Sim See Kiong, is a seven-storey commercial-residential building featuring street-facing shops on both Staunton Street and Chun Wing Lane. The property, which received its occupancy permit in 1979, is just a few steps from the Mid-Levels escalator which is popular with expats thanks to its location within a 10-minute walk of the Central MTR station.
Lai Wing-to (Getty Images)
SKS Staunton Limited, a locally registered company which lists sibling SKS Group executives Simon Sim Yow Yung and Cindi Sim as directors, signed a provisional agreement to purchase the property in February.
The property, said to be 80 percent occupied as of last February, according to agent listing for the property, has a gross floor area of 5,742 square feet (533 square metres). The ground floor is leased to Vission Nine, a cake shop operated by popular local bakery Vission Bakery. Serviced apartments operated by MIJ Living, which command rents starting at HK$22,800 per month, take up the upper floors.
The Sim family is paying approximately HK$18,286 per square foot for the asset, with analysts considering the pricing fair among market conditions.
Rents for the property’s just over 1,000-square-feet ground floor retail space is at approximately HK$200,000 per month, with Bobby Mak of Hong Kong-based CHFT Advisory and Appraisal valuing the shop component at HK$57 million. The upper floors spanning some 4,700 square feet of gross floor area is worth about HK$46 million, according to the veteran valuer.
“The transaction price of HK$105 million is fair,” Mak told Mingtiandi. “Both the retail portions along Staunton Street and the apartments have steady demand. This prime location ensures strong pedestrian flow and lifestyle appeal.”
Lai bought the property in 2009 for HK$71.8 million, according to Land Registry records.
Asset Fire Sale
The sale of Lai’s Hong Kong asset came just a few months after the Shop King sold a mixed-use building at 2-5 Old Bond Street in London’s posh West End to Scottish asset manager Aberdeen for £120 million ($160 million) in October.
Lai had acquired the property for £152.5 million from UK insurer NFU Mutual in December 2018. The £120 million sale price represented an approximately 21 percent loss for the veteran investor.
Lai’s London disposal came around the same time that he sold an aged commercial block in Mong Kok. In that same month, Lai sold the six-storey 1967-vintage property at 132 Sai Yeung Choi Street South for HK$62 million ($8 million), parting with the asset for nearly 40 percent less than what he paid in 2009.
SKS Group had not yet responded to Mingtiandi’s request for comment by the time of publication.
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