Honorary University Fellow (2018)
The anticipatory business vision and entrepreneurial spirit of Mr Francis S F Law, Executive Director of Toyo Mall Limited typifies Hong Kong’s evolving economy. His clarity of insight and farsightedness are the foundation of the unblemished record of success that Mr Law has achieved.
The seeds of his success began when he was a teenager. Unlike typical children, Mr Law did not spend most of his time at playgrounds; instead, he became involved in his father’s business ventures in pawn broking and real estate investment at an early age. After completing his degree in Business Administration at the University of Toronto in the early 1980s, Mr Law devoted his energies to steering the family business in Hong Kong and soon founded his own investment company in the 1990s. Mr Law is renowned for his profound insight into property investment. The economic crises since the 1980s are still fresh in his memory, but his farsighted investment in a falling market without succumbing to irrational fear demonstrated that his foresight and risk-taking in a competitive vacuum have stood the test of time. As an experienced investor, Mr Law firmly believes that success in business investment is a combination of grasping opportunities, preparation and good risk management.
Mr Law’s success is not simply a matter of career achievements. He has a profound Christian faith and has remained deeply connected to the Chinese identity. In the words of the Lord Jesus: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’. Mr Law is a living embodiment of the truth of this verse. He firmly believes he is a steward of God’s riches. Even with his extremely busy working life, Mr Law has maintained a great personal commitment to philanthropy in Mainland China as well as many developing Asian countries such as the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam, and in supporting the Christian community and the expansion of Hong Kong Baptist University’s horizons and capabilities to nurture young people who will become tomorrow’s leaders.
We honour Mr Law today for his unwavering support of the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), particularly the School of Chinese Medicine (SCM). His generous donation in 2015 has supported the research project entitled ‘Research and Development of Innovative Combination Drugs in Traditional Chinese Medicine’, which focuses on new drug discovery for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis and bone tumours. In recognition of Mr Law’s untiring support, the Institute under SCM which conducted the research was named the ‘Law Sau Fai Institute for Advancing Translational Medicine in Bone and Joint Diseases’ in April 2017. The Institute is instrumental in providing multidisciplinary scientists from the Faculty of Science and the School of Chinese Medicine with a synergistic collaboration platform to translate scientific findings into knowledge that benefits patients with bone and joint diseases, and it conducted a related life science study on Tianzhou-1, China’s first cargo spacecraft, in 2017 as the only collaborator outside the Mainland.
Currently an Honorary Court Member of HKBU, Mr Law shares the aspirations and the Christian background of the University, and is in the vanguard of forward-looking members of the Entrepreneur Committee of HKBU Foundation who have equipped the University with the strategies it needed to achieve the goal of becoming a leading liberal arts university for the world. Mr Law shared with us the fruits of his great wisdom born of many years at the front line of business. Since 2015, Toyo Mall Limited has been an Honorary Permanent President of HKBU Foundation.
Mr Francis S F Law is a successful and visionary entrepreneur. His tireless commitment and immense contributions to philanthropy, focusing on Christian Churches and related projects in Hong Kong, Mainland China and developing Asian countries, and health care and medicine in Hong Kong, and his vigorous support for the Hong Kong Baptist University have been most invaluable. He is undoubtedly an exemplary candidate for the Honorary University Fellowship.