A Starlux Airlines Airbus A330neo aircraft is pictured on static display at Singapore Airshow in Singapore on February 20, 2024.
Photo by ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP via Getty Images
The October listing of Starlux Airlines on the main board of the Taiwan Stock Exchange was likely a memorable milestone for its 54-year-old founder and chairman Chang Kuo-Wei. The company, Taiwan’s third-largest international carrier by both number of passengers and cargo volume, floated 18.5% of its equity raising nearly $300 million, which will be partly deployed to expand its fleet of aircraft.
Shares rose 54% on the first day of trading, giving Starlux a market value of $2.4 billion. Chang, a trained pilot, who owns a 64% stake in the company with his two sons, Sheng-Hung and Sheng-Wei, is now a billionaire based on that holding alone, with a net worth of $1.2 billion (after accounting for the estimated cost of previous Starlux share purchases.)
Chairman of Starlux Airlines Chang Kuo-Wei
Photo by ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP via Getty Images
Apart from giving him huge riches, the listing denotes a comeback for Chang, who founded Starlux only six years ago, after he was ousted from the Evergreen Group, his family’s transportation empire. His late father Chang Yung Fa, who died in 2016 at age 88 founded shipping giant Evergreen Marine and EVA Airways, which Starlux competes against. (State-owned China Airlines is another older rival.)
Founded in 2018, Starlux launched operations in 2020, an inopportune time as it was just before the pandemic. Starting out with regional flights connecting Taipei with Macau, Penang and Vietnam’s Da Nang, it undertook its first long-haul flight to Los Angeles in 2023, which Chang piloted himself. Today, Starlux has a fleet of 21 aircraft and covers 26 routes, with plans to upsize its fleet to 47 aircraft over the next three years.
In 2023, Starlux notched up a nearly sixfold increase in operating revenue to NT$22.5 billion ($700 million), and turned profitable for the first time with NT$149 million in net profit. Analysts attribute the airline’s robust revenue to the strong recovery of Taiwan’s aviation industry after the pandemic, as well as Kuo-Wei’s earlier experience piloting EVA, where he learnt how to optimize both the fleet and routes. For future growth, Starlux is likely to look to target business travelers by expanding seats in the front of the plane and taking on more transit customers, especially those traveling from the U.S. to Southeast Asia, say analysts.
The son of Chang Yung Fa’s second wife and the youngest among his four sons, Kuo-Wei was appointed chairman of EVA Airways in 2004, but walked away two years later and went to the U.S. to get trained as a pilot. He returned in 2010 as chief executive vice president while flying on the side, and rose to become chairman again in 2013.
Three years later after his father died, an inheritance battle broke out among the heirs. The patriarch’s will named Kuo-Wei as the head of the group and the sole inheritor of some assets, reportedly valued at NT$24 billion at the time . Within months, Chang Kuo-Wei’s three stepbrothers, Kuo-Hua, Kuo-Ming and Kuo-Cheng, ousted him from EVA Airways and other group businesses with Kuo-Cheng filing a lawsuit questioning the validity of the will.
In August 2024, Taiwan’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of Kuo-Wei, confirming the validity of Yung Fa’s will. The company has not responded to Forbes’ request for comment. Hung Ou Yang, managing partner of Taipei-based Brain Trust International Law Firm, said that in principle the plaintiff can no longer appeal, although according to Taiwanese law, Kuo-Wei, along with his mother, would be entitled to the bulk of the inheritance instead of all, despite what’s stated in the will.
Today the three stepbrothers are still major shareholders of EVA Airways and the group’s shipping heavyweight Evergreen Marine, and were on Forbes’ Taiwan’s 50 Richest 2024 list with a combined fortune of $4.1 billion. The eldest, Kuo-Hua, sits on the board of Evergreen Marine, which has declined to comment. The second oldest brother Kuo-Ming holds a 2% stake in Starlux. (Billionaire brothers Daniel and Richard Tsai, who run the island’s financial juggernaut Fubon Financial Holding, are also investors in Starlux.)
In a September interview, Kuo-Wei told Taiwan’s newspaper Economic Daily News that he had already sold all his stakes in Evergreen group companies and plans to sell any shares he would inherit. He said he has no intention to fight for Evergreen’s leadership, and hopes the family could have a “happy ending.”