Yung Kee was a Hong Kong landmark for 60 years — a family feud wound it up

Yung Kee was a Hong Kong institution. Its roast-goose restaurant on Wellington Street was a culinary landmark, the crown jewel of a family business worth an estimated HK$2 billion at its peak. But the company that had survived for decades carried a structural weakness no one had addressed: its founder, Kam Shui-fai, had never put a succession plan in place.

When Kam died in December 2004, he left behind a large family and a holding company with no governance to speak of. His sons Kinsen and Ronald became the only two directors; they appointed no independent directors, and the company had not held a formal board meeting in more than thirty years. The shares were divided among the family, and when one brother died and another's stake shifted, the balance of power tipped to Ronald — and the brothers fell into a feud over control that would last eight years.

The fight turned the company against itself. Ronald sidelined his brother, denied him access to financial information, and at one point moved to do away with the quorum for company decisions. In 2010 Kinsen petitioned the court to wind up the holding company unless one brother bought the other out. Kinsen died in 2012, before the case was resolved; his widow carried the appeal forward, and in November 2015 Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal ordered Yung Kee Holdings to be wound up on just and equitable grounds.

The restaurant itself survived — it was held by a separate subsidiary and later reopened — but the family's holding company did not. Yung Kee is now a textbook case in succession and corporate governance: a business that could withstand wars and recessions was undone by the one risk its owner never planned for, the question of what would happen when he was gone.