£40m for any man who can turn my gay daughter straight: Father's shock offer after lesbian wedding ceremony

As a billionaire playboy who claims to have bedded 10,000 women, Cecil Chao has no doubts about his own sexuality. Now he is trying to dictate the sexuality of his children too. The 76-year-old property and shipping tycoon is offering a £40million ‘marriage bounty’ to any man who can win the heart of his lesbian daughter – and turn her straight. He announced the reward after his daughter, Gigi, married her same-sex partner in France. Refusing to accept the gay union, he pledged the fortune to any potential male suitor able to walk the 33-year-old University of Manchester graduate down the aisle at a traditional wedding. The famously promiscuous Hong Kong businessman dismissed ‘false reports’ of his daughter’s lesbian nuptials and insisted she was still single. ‘I don’t mind whether he is rich or poor – the important thing is that he is generous and kind hearted,’ he said of the ideal husband for his daughter. ‘Gigi is a very good woman with both talents and looks. She is devoted to her parents, is generous and does volunteer work,’ he told the South China Morning Post. Same-sex marriages are not recognised in Hong Kong. According to reports, the spat between Mr Chao and his daughter erupted last week when she announced at an event in Beijing that she tied the knot with her long-term lover, Sean Eav, five months ago. A regular on the city’s social circuit and in celebrity magazines, Mr Chao has never been married. Gigi is the oldest of his three children with three mothers. In addition to the dowry, he has also offered to start his potential son-in-law up in his own business. He said the prize money was ‘an inducement to attract someone who has the talent, but not the capital, to start his own business’.Read more