Despite 28% Drop In Net Worth Pair Still Moving Ahead With Big Projects

This story is part of Forbes’ coverage of Singapore’s Richest 2020. See our full coverage here.

The pandemic has pounded the region’s perennially hot real estate markets, buffeting the property empire Gordon Tang and his wife Celine have amassed across Asia, Australia, Europe and the U.S., and dragging the couple’s net worth down 28% to $940 million. Strict quarantine measures forced the temporary closure of their Singapore-listed developer SingHaiyi’s property showrooms and hurt rental income at the real estate investment trusts they hold.

Tang and his wife built most of their fortune after moving to Singapore in the 1990s from their native China. They founded trading firm Tang Dynasty in 1995 and bought control of SingHaiyi in 2012. They’ve made influential friends along the way, notably Neil Bush, brother of former U.S. president George W. Bush. Bush chairs SingHaiyi, and is a director of the Tangs’ investment firm American Pacific International Capital, which owns and manages hotels, residential properties and malls in China and the U.S. The couple and SingHaiyi didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Tangs in recent years also acquired sizable stakes in several REITs, now hit by the pandemic. The couple and their family hold a 14% stake in Suntec REIT, which owns properties in Australia and Singapore, and whose shares have fallen 31% in the past 12 months. And OUE Commercial REIT, which holds properties in Singapore and Shanghai and in which the Tangs have a minority stake with family, has lost 30% of its value over the same period. SingHaiyi, meanwhile, is still moving forward with its own projects, including three residential projects in Singapore, among them a $1.6 billion condo set to open in 2023, and a residential property in San Francisco scheduled for completion in 2024.