Li Ka-Shing: the Superman who soared from the factory floor
LI Ka-Shing, Hong Kong’s richest man and chairman of Cheung King Infrastructure, is one of the largest foreign investors in the UK following two major acquisitions over the past two years.
Last year, the octogenarian billionaire snapped up Northumbrian Water for £2.4bn, in the largest takeover of a UK publicly listed company since Kraft bought Cadbury in 2010.
CKI, the biggest publicly listed infrastructure company in Hong Kong by market capitalisation, also led a consortium that bought the UK electricity distribution arm of EDF Energy for £5.8bn in 2010.
Nicknamed Superman in China, Li Ka-Shing has an estimated wealth of around £16bn according to The Sunday Times Rich List and is the richest man of Chinese descent in the world today.
Born in 1928 in a coastal city in the southeastern part of China, Li was forced to flee to Hong Kong to avoid the war and worked 16 hour days in a plastics factory before setting up his own plastics manufacturing business, Cheung Kong Industries, in 1950.
Li developed his company into a leading real estate investment firm, eventually purchasing the trading house Hutchison Whampoa in 1975, and extended his empire into ports and telecommunications.
In Britain, he set up what was to become Orange, the mobile phone company, which he sold for $14.6bn in 1999 just before the telecoms market collapse.
A British citizen and father of two, Li is also a philanthropist and has donated more than $1bn to charities and educational establishments.