Harunori Takahashi

Harunori Takahashi
Born1945/46
Died18 July 2005
NationalityJapanese
Occupationproperty developer
SpouseAki Takahashi
Children2
Four Seasons Hotel New York

Harunori Takahashi (高橋 治則, Takahashi Harunori, 1945/46 - 18 July 2005) was a Japanese billionaire property developer and the head of EIE International Corp.

Early life

Harunori Takahashi came from a prominent family in western Japan, near Nagasaki, and was descended from a pre-war Prime Minister.[1] His father Yoshiharu Takahashi saved EIE from bankruptcy in June 1975.[2]

Career

Takahashi was head of the privately owned EIE International Corp, which at one time owned one trillion yen in real estate assets.[3]

In 1986, EIE acquired a 35% stake in Regent Hotels & Resorts. In 1989, Takahashi started building what was to become The Regent New York on 57th Street, designed by I. M. Pei. In a 1991 New York Times profile,[1] he was compared to Donald Trump, as a "brash" developer with a "hectic pace of property acquisitions", under pressure from banks and "struggling under $6 billion in shaky debt".[1]

At his peak, Takahashi owned Regent and Hyatt hotels across Asia, a floating hotel in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City, 50% of Australia's Bond University, Denarau Island in Fiji, and was building a thousand-mile railway in Australia's.[1]

EIE sold Regent to Four Seasons Hotels in 1992 and the New York hotel eventually opened as the Four Seasons Hotel New York.

Personal life

He was married to Aki Takahashi, and they had two children, Ichiro Takahashi and Makiko Komai.[4]

Takahashi died on 18 July 2005, aged 59, following a brain haemorrhage in a hospital in Tokyo.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Sterngold, James (12 February 1991). "A Japanese Symbol of Excess". The New York Times. Retrieved 26 August 2018.
  2. ^ Raymond Frederick Watters; T. G. McGee; Ginny Sullivan (1997). Asia-Pacific: New Geographies of the Pacific Rim. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. p. 114. ISBN 978-1-85065-321-9. Retrieved 26 August 2018.
  3. ^ a b "Real estate mogul Takahashi dies". 20 July 2005. Retrieved 26 August 2018 – via Japan Times Online.
  4. ^ "Bond University honours its Founding Fathers with bronze sculptures".


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