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 ome businessmen
build new empires; others begin new eras.
In 1979 Li Ka-shing, then 51, bought
control of the property and trading
conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa from the
Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, thereby
writing a new chapter in Hong Kong's
history. Li said he wanted Hutchison
primarily for the development potential of
its large Hong Kong land holdings. W.R.A.
Wyllie, then Hutchison's chief executive,
told Time the bank was being politic,
"preferring to see [Hutchison] move into
Chinese control."
Others saw the deal as an
overdue passing of the mantle to a
community eager and able to take over the
colony's large businesses. Li has more
than measured up to that early challenge.
His Cheung Kong Group today accounts for
about 10% of the total market
capitalization of all Hong Kong publicly
quoted companies. His net worth, an
estimated $5.9 billion, makes him one of
the richest men in the world.
The story of Li's rise
belongs to the burgeoning chronicle of
successful Overseas Chinese tycoons. Two
years after he moved to Hong Kong from
Shantou in southern China as a
12-year-old, his father died. Li worked
16-hour days selling plastic belts and
watchbands to support his mother and two
siblings. In 1950, at 22, he started
Cheung Kong, making plastic combs and
soapboxes. When his landlord kept raising
the rent, Li bought his own factory and an
apartment building. Early on, he avoided
the peril of excessive debt that proved
the undoing of many other local-property
companies: by giving landowners a share in
future profits, he got around the heavy
obligation of paying up-front for
land.
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Li Ka-shing
An avatar of
Chinese success
in
Hong Kong's
European-dominated
confines.
A keen poker player, Li has
displayed a steady nerve in corporate battles. In
May 1988 he threatened a takeover bid for Hongkong
Land, a premier local-property company owned by
Jardine Matheson. It turned out he was bluffing,
and his bluff paid off. Li forced Jardine to buy
back his stake in the company without his taking
any substantial losses. In 1991, betting that the
broadcast business was about to take off, Li, with
his son Richard, started star tv, a satellite
service, beaming reruns of American daytime soap
operas to Asian viewers. A couple of years later,
he sold nearly two-thirds of the business to Rupert
Murdoch for about $525 million, netting yet another
impressive profit -- and adding another chapter to
the legend of his success.
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