In May tension and acrimony were running high between Walter Kwok, then chairman and chief executive of Sun Hung Kai Properties, and his two younger brothers, who were seeking to oust him from the helm of the world’s biggest real estate company by market capitalisation.

At the time Mr Kwok issued a press release that referred to a famous ancient Chinese poem: “We are born of the same root/Why are we then so quick to persecute each other?”