Loke returned to Kuala Lumpur to oversee the management of her late husband's assets and businesses. In 1936 she incorporated Associated Theatres Ltd (later renamed Cathay Organisation), registering her son Wan Tho, as one of the owners of the business. At that time Wan Tho was still an undergraduate at Cambridge University. She proceeded to build the Loke family's first multiplex: the Pavilion Theatre in Kuala Lumpur. In 1937, she purchased a site at Dhoby Ghaut in Singapore where she constructed the modern Cathay Building and developed cinema, hotel and restaurant businesses. When the Cathay building was completed in 1939, it was the first skyscraper in Singapore before the war and the signature building of Cathay Organisation. When Singapore was occupied by the Japanese, Loke evacuated to India and, during the war years there, started a Chinese restaurant in Bangalore.