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]
