Who the heck is Giants owner Philip Morais?
Politically, Morais has given a grand total of $70 to ActBlue over 38 separate donations. That didn't fit anywhere else in the article, so I'm putting it here.
This is the tenth installment in our series on who exactly owns the Giants. So far, we have covered real estate mogul Scott Seligman, private equity guy Phil Halperin, real estate mogul Jed Walentas, medical technology investor David Schnell, radio station owner/former Yahoo board member Arthur Kern (now no longer listed as an owner), lady of mystery Nancy Olsen, Republican super-donor Charles Johnson, Manila business mogul George Drysdale, and charter school supporter Paul Wythes, Jr. Time to look at the big board!
Today’s subject: Philip D. Morais. Why him? Why not any of the others? Look, once I figure out my system, you’ll be the first to know.
Philip Morais was born and raised in Hong Kong, to two parents from Macau. As a kid, he played baseball in Hong Kong Little Leagues, learning to love the game, a love that only grew as his grandmother emigrated to San Francisco in 1965. He attended Hong Kong Polytechnic, got a job at the bank HSBC, and then worked at a couple investment companies before buying his first property in 1975, and forming his first company along with it.
Over the next few decades, Morais developed a nice real estate portfolio for himself in Hong Kong. He eventually got into serviced apartments — furnished apartments generally used for short-term stays, though long-term isn’t unheard of — and eventually amassed 250 serviced apartments in Hong Kong through his company Shama, which he sold to Morgan Stanley in 2006 for $124 million.
Morais and his children then started CHI International, a luxury hospitality company that has two main divisions: a serviced apartments company (CHI Residences) which is mainly based in Hong Kong and Shanghai, and a resort in Fiji (Garden Island Resort).
So how did a real estate guy from Hong Kong come to own a piece of the Giants?
Morais’s grandmother had moved to San Francisco in the mid-’60s, but she was joined by other relatives. He would visit relatively often, seeing the Giants play whenever he was in town. Those visits to San Francisco meant that he became fond of the city, and as his career took off in real estate brokerage, he would often sell San Francisco properties to Hong Kong buyers.
Those deals put Morais in contact with Walter Shorenstein, a San Francisco real estate titan who just happened to have been one of Mayor Frank Jordan’s calls when he was trying to keep the Giants in San Francisco. Shorenstein was helping put together an ownership group, he was having a meeting with this guy from Hong Kong, and he asked Morais if he was interested.
“When he asked if I was interested, I told him I was in before he could finish the question,” Morais told an interviewer in 2011.
Morais ended up with 5% of the team, and promptly lost money every year (according to him, a member of the ownership group, so please enjoy that complimentary grain of salt with this sentence) until Pac Bell Park opened in the year 2000, drastically boosting attendance. Along the way, Morais put in more money every year to cover operating losses, and ended up with a much larger share of the team than he had started with.
Morais was the first Asian owner in baseball, and it took a yearlong background check from both MLB and the FBI before he was officially allowed to be a Giants owner. As of 2011, he attended 30-40 games per year in person, and watched the rest in his Hong Kong office on MLB.tv. Even though he would make a massive profit if he sold his share in the team, “I will never sell,” he said. He became a fan, got very rich, pumped ton of money into the team, and is now reaping the rewards. In his place, I know I wouldn’t either. The man won. What more could he want?