The chairman of property and finance conglomerate Chinese Estates Holdings, which was founded by his father, Joseph Lau, he is also the chairman of one think tank, the Bauhinia Foundation Research Centre, and the director of another, MWYO. A long-term board member of Hong Kong’s much loved local tourist attraction Ocean Park, Lau Ming-wai stepped up to the role of chairman in 2020, taking over from Leo Kung; he was succeeded in 2022 by Paulo Pong.

A visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School since 2014 who has made important academic contributions to the field of trust law, he is also deputy chairman of Youth Development Commission, and a member of the Exchange Fund Advisory Committee, the Chief Executive’s Council of Advisers on Innovation and Strategic Development, the Community Care Fund Task Force and the Societal Engagement Task Force. A council member of City University of Hong Kong, he runs his family’s Joseph Lau Luen Hung Charitable Trust, which is focused on education; it made a HK$125 million donation to the university in 2011, the largest it has received from a private donor. A member of the Sichuan Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, he is a recipient of a Gold Bauhinia Star.