MGM officials give Pansy credit. They say her flexibility in negotiating the ownership and management structure of the MGM casino enabled the partnership to succeed. Acknowledging that it would have been difficult to do business with Stanley, given his reputation, the MGM spokesperson says that Pansy "impressed us as a strong, experienced, talented, trustworthy, and independent individual."

New Jersey authorities are now examining the deal closely. Pansy, who is managing director of the family's holding company, second in command to her father, must convince them that she's acting independently. In a strange twist, her best chance of preserving her father's legacy is to prove that her future as a casino magnate does not include him.

Once inside the shell of the new casino, Pansy perches on the edge of an oversize love seat that's situated in a cocktail bar decked out with Ian Schrager-inspired decor. She chooses her words with an eye to the New Jersey officials half a world away, declaring that she won't be her father's stand-in but his rival in the casino business. When the MGM deal is approved, "we will have to go into competition with my father's operations," she says, adding that although she is an executive at Shun Tak Holdings, the company run by her father, her relationship with MGM is entirely separate. As a public company, she adds, Shun Tak has nonexecutive directors and official procedures that protect against conflicts of interest.

The regulators aren't Pansy's only worry. A battle of succession is reportedly playing out in the family, with Pansy's aunt Winnie Ho and Angela Leung, Pansy's ballroom-dancing stepmother, each vying with Pansy for control of Stanley's corporate empire after he dies. Winnie is suing Stanley, her brother, in Macao's high court, alleging that he called her cheap and despicable and that he's trying to force her to sell her 7.3 percent stake in the casino business to Pansy for a pittance. Winnie reportedly wants to shift ownership of her shares to a company she owns to ensure that her son inherits a piece of the gaming business. Leung, the stepmother, is just two years older than Pansy and is a major shareholder in Stanley's casino business. Winnie declined to comment, and Leung couldn't be reached.

Pansy denies that there is any succession dispute in the Ho family. "I don't think actually that was ever a subject that was thoroughly discussed," she says. "In a Chinese family, in fact, you know, the elderly person is still very much involved and, in fact, still at the helm of the business." Nonetheless, she has a frosty relationship with Leung. One of her few disagreements with her father is her refusal to acknowledge Leung as his wife, choosing instead to call her Stanley's "close companion."

 

Pansy Catilina Ho Chiu King has always been a favorite of her father's; he closely guided her education and career and fostered her ascent to the top of the family business. One of 17 children that Stanley claims as his own, Pansy says that when she was growing up in Hong Kong, she often accompanied her father on trips into the nearby mountains to hunt partridges and wild ducks. "I was the brave one of the family who would go with him, and we would climb mountains and trek through the wilderness for hours together," she recalls. Despite their close relationship, she never refers to him in an interview as "Dad," or even "my father," but instead chooses the honorific title "Dr. Ho."

Her mother, Lucina Lam, was the second of Stanley's four wives. She bore him five children, of whom Pansy is the eldest. "My mother used to make me accountable to look after my siblings," she says. "I was the babysitter, and so it has always been." Lam, who now splits her time between homes in Hong Kong and Toronto, collects antiques and artifacts, often bought at auctions that she and Pansy attend together.

According to Pansy, her parents never divorced and remain close. She disputes reports that her father also has an illegitimate son by a Hong Kong pop star named Ling Ling. "He has 17 children with four different wives. Why would he deny having a son by another woman?" she asks.

Like many other rising Hong Kong businessmen, Stanley sent his children to U.S. educational institutions. Pansy attended grades 11 and 12 at Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California, one of the West Coast's premier private schools for girls. She had an unremarkable academic record but participated in a variety of extra-curricular activities, including the debate team, the choir, and theater. "We would put on a school production every year. The one I really remember enjoying was The Tempest," says Pansy, who graduated in 1980.