Editor’s Note
This article details the record-breaking purchase of a blue diamond at a Sotheby’s auction in Geneva by Hong Kong tycoon Joseph Lau, who named the gem after his young daughter.
The Chinese collector who purchased a 12.03-carat blue diamond for a record-breaking 48.6 million Swiss francs ($56 million) at the Sotheby’s jewelry auction in Geneva, Switzerland, on the 11th (local time) has been identified as Hong Kong real estate tycoon Joseph Lau (Liu Luanxiong). The identity of ‘Josephine’, who surprised the world’s jewelry auction market for two consecutive days, was revealed to be his 7-year-old daughter.
The total price of the three ultra-expensive diamonds he purchased and named after his daughter amounts to $86.4 million (approximately 100 billion won).
The name Josephine became a topic of discussion when a Hong Kong collector who won the bid for the 12.03-carat ‘Blue Moon’ diamond at the Sotheby’s auction in Geneva that day immediately renamed it ‘The Blue Moon of Josephine’.
This diamond garnered even more interest because the 16.08-carat pink diamond, which was auctioned for 28.7 million Swiss francs (approximately $33 million) at the Christie’s jewelry auction held in Geneva the previous day, was also named ‘Sweet Josephine’.
Foreign media reported that the identity of the collector, who won bids for ultra-expensive diamonds on two consecutive days and gave them a mysterious name, was confirmed to be Hong Kong real estate tycoon Joseph Lau (Liu Luanxiong).
It was revealed that he named the newly purchased diamonds after his 7-year-old daughter, Josephine, whom he had with his former entertainment reporter girlfriend, Chan Hoi-wan.
Lau had previously named a blue diamond he purchased for $9.5 million (approximately 11 billion won) in 2009 ‘Star of Josephine’.
According to SCMP, Lau, born in Hong Kong in 1951, graduated from university in Canada in 1974 and entered the family business of manufacturing ceiling fans. He accumulated wealth through repeated mergers and acquisitions with his brother.
He has shown deep interest in art auctions, having won bids for Andy Warhol’s ‘Mao Zedong’ for $17.3 million and Paul Gauguin’s ‘Te Poipoi’ for $39.2 million.
In 2007, at an auction organized by the Hong Kong government, he purchased the car license plate ‘1 LOVE U’ for 1.4 million Hong Kong dollars (approximately 200 million won) and attached it to a Mercedes-Benz sedan used by his girlfriend for commuting.
As of this month, with a total fortune of $9.8 billion (approximately 11 trillion won), he is ranked 6th on Forbes’ Hong Kong rich list and 114th on the world’s rich list.
He has four other children from his ex-wife and former girlfriends, in addition to Josephine.
In March of last year, Lau was sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly bribing a former minister to purchase development land in Macau, but he has avoided serving the sentence by not appearing in Macau. There is no extradition agreement between Macau and Hong Kong.
