Perhaps mindful of his mortality and to ensure a smooth succession, Chen handed over the day-to-day running of NagaCorp Ltd to several of his sons, and transferred his controlling stake in the company to a family trust.
Founded by Chen in 1995, Hong Kong-listed NagaCorp operates NagaWorld, the largest casino resort in Indochina.
A leadership change in April 2022 saw Chen, then aged 74 years, becoming the senior CEO, while three of his sons – Yiy Fon, Cherchi and Yiy Hwuan – took up joint CEO positions.
Yiy Fon, now 42, was given the responsibility to oversee operations, Cherchi, 36, oversaw finance and treasury, while Yiy Hwuan, 44, was put in charge of the group’s hotels.
A fourth son, Yepern, would continue leading the environmental, social and governance (ESG) activities of the group.
A NagaCorp statement at the time said Chen hoped his sons would work as a team to manage and take the group to the next level of success.
Following his passing, second son Yiy Fon was redesignated as CEO of the NagaCorp group, assuming the leadership duties and responsibilities previously held by Chen.
Chen’s final wishes
Chen was Malaysia’s seventh richest individual with a net worth of US$2.8 billion (RM13.2 billion) as of May 2023, according to Forbes.
Recent exchange filings by NagaCorp on the distribution of shares held under the family trust provide an insight into Chen’s final wishes and whom he favoured to take the group forward. The Sakai Trust controls 69.26% of NagaCorp.
The filings revealed Yiy Fon was given the largest allocation – 368 million shares or 8.3% of NagaCorp, worth about RM1 billion.
Four other sons – Yiy Hwuan, Cherchi, Yepern, and Cien Then – were each entitled to 291 million shares, a 6.6% stake each in NagaCorp with each block valued at about RM800 million.
“After the passing away of Chen Lip Keong, in total 1,531,773,577 shares held under The Sakai Trust can be distributed pursuant to its terms,” the filing stated.
In addition, another 1,531,773,583 NagaCorp shares will continue to be held in trust for which all five sons are beneficiaries.
Yiy Fon graduated in 2003 with an economics degree from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and was appointed an executive director of NagaCorp in 2015.
He also holds executive positions in several companies in Malaysia in which the Chen family has shareholdings in. He serves as the chairman and executive director of FACB Industries Incorporated Bhd, and is the CEO and executive director of Karambunai Corp Bhd and Petaling Tin Bhd, according to the NagaCorp website.
Chen, who was trained as a medical doctor, called himself an “accidental gambling tycoon”. In the early 1990s, he went to Cambodia to explore for oil in the Gulf of Siam, but when its government tendered a casino licence, he grabbed the opportunity and ended up with a gaming goldmine.
He launched his casino operations on a leased barge on the Bassac River near Phnom Penh’s Royal Palace in 1995. In 2000, NagaCorp bought land near the barge dock and began building NagaWorld, a casino-resort complex, which was opened in 2003.
In 2006, NagaCorp became the first casino company to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange. In 2017, Chen opened Naga 2, a twin-tower extension. The group holds a casino licence running to 2065, with a guaranteed monopoly to 2035.
Yiy Fon appears to have been given the stamp of approval by his father to lead the casino group. Whether he and his brothers can “work together as a team” to take NagaCorp to the next level, as Chen envisaged, remains to be seen.