A billionaire tycoon's assistant has a baby and suddenly climbs up the societal ladder, moving into a luxurious apartment.

His girlfriend declares war on the other woman by publicly dousing rampant rumours that the infant is his.

He strikes back by cancelling his girlfriend's credit cards.

This is the story so far in what has become the most sensational saga to hit Hong Kong since actor Edison Chen's dirty celebrity pictures were posted on the Web early this year.

The man of the tabloid moment is property mogul Joseph Lau, 57, famous as a collector of art (such as Paul Gauguin's The Morning, valued at US$39 million or S$59 million), jets (including a Boeing 787 Dreamliner worth US$150 million) and beauty queens.

Former Miss Hong Kong winners Michele Reis and Ada Choi (pictured below), as well as actress Rosamund Kwan, are among the bevy of beauties he has been linked to in the past.

Now, he is in an alleged love triangle with his girlfriend, former Miss Hong Kong semi-finalist Yvonne Lui, 32, and his assistant Chan Ho Wan, 29, who gave birth to a girl on Oct 23.

Lui had maintained a stoical silence for months from the time Chan, a former entertainment reporter with Apple Daily, became pregnant earlier this year.

Amid tabloid talk that she was having a baby with her boss, Chan moved into a posh apartment in the monied Mid-Levels with a market value of HK$60 million (S$11.7 million), said Sing Tao Daily.

Employer and employee were also spotted shopping and holding hands. Sometimes, he even helped her carry her statussymbol bag, the Hermes Birkin - just one of the reported HK$3 million worth of the brand's handbags that she owns.

After her daughter was born in a luxury hospital in the hilltop district The Peak, he and his mother visited.

Even then, Lui, who has a six-year-old daughter with Lau, had appeared to be taking things well. On Oct 26, the couple were seen dining at his daily haunt, Fook Lam Moon restaurant in Wan Chai district, and looking lovey-dovey.

She swung into action, however, on Oct 31. In an open letter issued to the press in English and Chinese, she declared that the speculation that Lau was the baby's father was baseless and had 'put tremendous strain' on her family.

Referring to Lau as her husband and to Chan as an 'assistant with ambitions', she wrote: 'Although the identity of the father remains unknown, my husband and I will do everything we can within the range of our ability to provide all kinds of assistance to the mother and the baby.'

If the statement was her attempt to stake her claim on Lau, it backfired.

Days later, she was seen at a designer shop discovering that all her credit cards had been cancelled, reported The Standard newspaper. Asked if the shopping ban was his doing, Lau did not deny it.

Without specifying whether Chan's daughter was his, he told Eastweek magazine in an interview published on Nov 4: 'As a man, if you were me, would you do the same?

'There was a time that I was very sick, in serious condition, and fearing for the worst, I gave the woman a large sum of money,' he said of Lui.

'Some women itch when they have money in their hands. The less money they have, the less itchy they become.'

Lau, who has not been able to have lunch at Fook Lam Moon without triggering a reporters' stampede since Lui's statement, also said she made him look like a clown.

Lui, who has a doctorate in chemistry, 'has studied so much but still doesn't have a brain', he said. 'But sometimes, those who study a lot don't think about the consequences when they do things.'

He added: 'The damage caused by this incident cannot be reversed, cannot be salvaged. Even if she were to kneel a hundred times, it would be useless.'

To add to the drama, casino king Stanley Ho quoted Lau as saying Chan's baby was his.

But Lau told Eastweek: 'He did congratulate me but I didn't say whether the child was mine or not.'

Fingers were pointed at Taiwanese music executive Sam Chen for Lui's brazen outburst in the press. It was said that her friend Chen, who has worked with singers such as Stefanie Sun and Jolin Tsai, advised her to fight for her man. It is a claim that he has denied vigorously.

On the day Lau's interview with Eastweek was published, his girlfriend was photographed driving out of his family residence in Happy Valley. Out of his stable of sedans, she had chosen the Mercedes-Benz with the licence plate 'I LOVE U'. Tabloids read her move as a direct message to him.

All through the soap opera, Chan has stayed silent. According to Ming Pao Daily News, the one-time journalist distanced herself from her former colleagues after she met Lau and joined his company in 2002.

Since then, she has been living the high life and hopping from one luxurious address to another. Her mother now lives in her previous HK$40-million apartment, after she vacated it this year to move into The Mayfair in the Mid-Levels.

Still, observers such as socialite Pamela Pak have a word of caution for wannabe Cinderellas who look up to Chan.

Alluding to Raise The Red Lantern, the 1991 Zhang Yimou film about a man and his four wives, she said: 'It's always Mr Lau who gets to raise the red lanterns. Since when did the lanterns get to have any say?'

In other words, what a tycoon gives, a tycoon can also take away.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Nov 16, 2008.