Upon his death in 1956, at the age of 94, part of his inheritance was used to establish the Sir Robert Ho Tung Charitable Fund, the North China Fund and the South China Fund, which aim at contributing to the society.
As a matter of course Ho Tung was one of the biggest landlords in Hong Kong, possessing properties, including luxury mansions, in every district of the city. In 1906 he acquired a mansion on the Victoria Peak, namely The Eyrie. Soon afterwards he was granted the permission to reside on the Peak, so becoming the very first Chinese person to live there. His mansions were always decently named — The Eyrie was later constructed into two separate mansions called The Chalet and The Dunford, and there was The Neuk in Aberdeen Street on the Mid-Levels above Sheung Wan. Apart from all these, The Falls, again on the Peak, might have been the most well-known; it is the famous Ho Tung Gardens today, awesomely magnificent, with a natural mountain stream inside (hence The Falls) and came with a single-digit telephone number “8”.
In Hong Kong, specifically, he held shares in one-fifth of the 83 listed companies in 1938; statistics also show that, in the 1950s, he personally owned 3% of all the real estates in Hong Kong, not counting the properties and lands he acquired in the name of the company. The wealth of Ho Tung is now beyond calculation, and the man is considered “the richest man in Hong Kong” at present as he was in the past. He also earned the sobriquet, “the Far East JP Morgan”, in the west.
Ho Tung was active in the political, economic, cultural and social spheres of Hong Kong as well as China and Britain. He aided reformers and revolutionaries, warlords and the Nationalist government; he gave financial support to the British Empire in the First World War, and initiated or substantially sponsored Hong Kong’s charity works such as poverty alleviation, disaster relief, education and medical service. For all his contributions, Ho Tung was recognized in the local community as the “Grand Old Man of Hong Kong”; officially, he was knighted by King George V as Knight Bachelor and then by Queen Elizabeth II as Knight Commander in 1955. He was, in retrospect, the only person knighted twice in the history of Hong Kong. A man of unprecedented power and achievement, he was also awarded decorations from the Republic of China, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Annam (Vietnam).
