Challenging Times

LKF Group’s Jonathan Zeman is facing his toughest test since becoming CEO.

- Pamela Ambler

Jonathan Zeman’s two-week family vacation on the resort island of Phuket in January turned into a nearly two-month stay, as he waited in vain for the Covid-19 outbreak to subside. “Luckily we have an office there and a new project, so it was very productive,” says the 43-year-old CEO of Hong Kong-based Lan Kwai Fong Holdings (LKF Group).

In early March, Zeman flew to Hong Kong to face his toughest challenge since becoming CEO in 2013. He left his wife and children in Phuket as Hong Kong schools were still closed. A week after he returned, the territory’s government responded to a new wave of cases by imposing a quarantine on all arrivals. “It’s been a tough year,” he says, in his first major interview since the start of the pandemic.

Lan Kwai Fong occupies a special place in Hong Kong—a narrow L-shaped street in its Central district that is one of Asia’s most famous lifestyle areas, often just called LKF. On Lan Kwai Fong and surrounding streets, expatriates and locals pack roughly 130 bars and eateries nightly to eat, drink and be merry. In normal years, several million will visit the area.

As the largest landlord (by size) in the area, LKF Group’s success requires customers to socially un-distance. Yet the typical crowds have been scarce for months in Lan Kwai Fong, with a local media report likening it to a “ghost town.” Jonathan’s father Allan Zeman, who founded the company and brought it through the Asian financial crisis and SARS, calls the current situation “unprecedented.”