Family Business Insights
Hong Kong Transport Dynasty Figure Sets Out Succession Approach

We talk to a prominent figure in Hong Kong's business sector and transportation industry – William Louey. He discusses how he was able to carve out a role away from day-to-day specific management, while staying energetically involved in driving the organisation, and pursuing philanthropic goals.
In discussions about transferring business and liquid wealth to succeeding generations, a regular topic is how to ensure that inheritance is not a burden to be resented, but a basis for opportunity.
Not all sons, daughters and grandchildren are cut out to run a firm as their parents have done, and yet next generations don’t want to let a business fall out of their grasp. One solution – although there is no “silver bullet” – is to retain a degree of ownership control while bringing in outside professionals.
In Asia, where multi-generational family business dynasties have arisen, business transfer and the control dynamic is an important topic.
Letting family members retain non-executive roles while ceding daily control to outsiders has been the general approach of Hong Kong-based William Louey, who recently spoke to WealthBriefingAsia about his strategy.
Louey is a non-executive director and fourth generation heir of the Kowloon Motor Bus Company, founded by his grandfather, William S D Louey, in 1921. Louey went off to study in the UK but when he was in his mid-20s, family bereavements meant that he answered the call of his grandmother, Alice Louey, to return to Hong Kong and help manage KMB. He joined the board in 1990.
Louey joined the firm’s board and quickly found that the existing corporate hierarchy was very used to doing in things in a certain way. He wanted to pursue his own goals to incorporate philanthropy (education, health and other fields). And he has amassed a real estate portfolio, among other acievements.
Although the day-to-day management of KMB wasn’t his forte or passion, he helped galvanise the workforce, representing it in a public way – a task that he relishes. “I realised if I wanted to employ the best CEO that it would be difficult to do with a member of the family…it was best to have outside people running it,” Louey said.
Running a firm such as KMB is a large responsibility. In 1933 the firm, listed in Hong Kong as Transport International, was granted (by the British) the franchise to operate the buses in Kowloon and the New Territories in Hong Kong. KMB, which carries more than 2.8 million passengers per day, also advises other nations on how to develop sustainable public transport systems. At one stage the company was the biggest buyer of buses from TfL in London.
“We're just a public transport company, which is very hard to run with a huge, big fleet of staff. And we must face the government and the Hong Kong public. Every time we raise a few cents, we'll be scolded at, and the media writes to us,” Louey said.
Louey in front of one of his organisation's buses
Non-executive roles
Louey said that his son, who has attained a PhD in biotechnology
and is now a biotech investor in his own right, will let him
decide the business course he wants to take. “He can be a board
member and take on a non-executive job.”
Today, KMB’s managing director, Roger Lee, has been MD since the beginning of 2015. He has a knowledge of engineering and a background in sectors such as property development. Louey and Lee meet for dinner at least twice a week to discuss the business, and focus on their sides of the organisation. “We both have a level of autonomy,” Louey said.
“He's [Lee] passionate, he was never in transportation. He's a civil engineer by training. Overnight, he learned all our bus routes, all the company culture, and it was very decisive into, like moving the head office to a big depot, like one floor,” Louey said. “We have 15 departments and all of them don't communicate with one another. And then Roger decided to move them all into an empty depot. And at that time, everybody opposed this idea. They were so angry because they have to travel so much further to go to work and all that. And, he was so tough, he decided to do it. He renovated the place. So now we have one whole floor. So, 400 people sit together, but obviously with partitions and all that.”
The KMB business is not run to take large risks but has a cautious approach with low debt gearing, Louey said.
Business succession
Getting business succession right is important for Asia.
According to a report by Russell Reynolds Associates in 2022,
family businesses, which form the backbone of the Asian economy,
account for 85 per cent of the companies in the region. Of the
top 750 global family businesses ranked by revenue, more than 20
per cent are based in Asia, with combined revenue of almost $2
trillion. More than 30 per cent of these firms will go through a
generational change over the next five years.
According to a study by the Family Business Institute, only 30 per cent of family businesses can be passed down to the second generation; 12 per cent can continue to the third generation; and 3 per cent develop to the fourth generation or more (source: Consultancy Asia, January 2022).
Blazing his own trail
For this lover of karaoke singing competitions, sports contests
and other charity events and team-building exercises, the
division of labour and responsibility has worked well for him, he
said. Louey has achieved a harmonious role at the
firm his grandfather built.
Louey has been able to carve out his own field in philanthropy. Inspired by late grandfather, in 1995 William Louey set up the William S D Louey Educational Foundation to provide scholarships for poor but outstanding students from mainland China. The foundation has extended financial support to candidates from other countries.
Describing how philanthropy came from his background – and his paternal grandmother – Louey said: “I just wanted to help a handful of very bright scholars because I believe education solves a lot of today's problem, such as racism, sexism, and all these things are to do with people who don't have enough exposure and education and [where] they're frightened of something they don't know. So, because I was very lucky that I was in the boarding school where I mixed with 70 different nationalities, I was really brought up with the whole world. I was used to the culture, their religion,” he said.
“In a way in the beginning, I had no goals. After the first year and after the first six scholars, I became obsessed because I was enjoying the experience so much. I decided to continue the following year, and then the following year. So now we're celebrating the 30th anniversary,” he said.
Such efforts have led in other directions. In 1999, Louey was invited to join the committee of the China Oxford Scholarship Fund, and subsequently in 2011, appointed as Member of Vice Chancellor’s Circle, University of Oxford. Between 2003 and 2012, he also served as executive committee member of The Friends of Cambridge University in Hong Kong, the sponsor of the Prince Philip Scholarship.
Louey mentioned his love of art and creative design, so this publication asked him how he thinks business heirs and those potentially inheriting a specific business can and should keep that creative spark going?
“Creativity is not just applied to art and design and paintings and sculptures and all that. You can make your business, like you do something that no one has ever done before,” he replied.
Louey described how his creative side works in the firm.
Louey said he worked with others to set up an app for KMB, known as the “1933 app.” “I had this idea of setting up an app for the company so that people don't need to wait at the bus stops.They will know exactly what time the bus arrived. And people can stay in a 711 on a shopping mall and then when the bus is about to come and then they just come out and get on the bus,” Louey said. Some eight million people have downloaded the app – more than the population of Hong Kong, suggesting that it has been downloaded by those outside the city, or by people with more than one phone.