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But despite being known as ‘Superman’ to his associates, very few people in Britain have heard of Li Ka-Shing – even though he has been quietly buying up many of our biggest assets for years.
With a £22billion personal fortune, the 86-year-old owner of the Hutchison Whampoa corporation has been Asia’s richest tycoon for almost two decades.
Now his latest deal – to snap up O2 and its 24million customers from Spanish owners Telefonica – will cement his position as one of Britain’s biggest investors.
From chemist chain Superdrug to Felixstowe Port, his investments stretch across almost every area of British life.
One quarter of UK homes receive gas through pipes owned by one of his two gas companies.
And almost 30 per cent of British residents get electricity delivered through UK Power Networks, the power grid that covers London and the South East.
Mr Li already owns mobile company Three, which boasts eight million UK customers.
A deal to buy O2 would catapult the company to become the largest mobile firm here, overtaking EE.
Described as the ‘ultimate rags to riches’ story, Mr Li was born in 1928 in a coastal city in southeast China.
He fled to Hong Kong with his family in 1940 when the Japanese army invaded.
His father, a teacher, later died of tuberculosis because the family was too poor to afford treatment.
Mr Li, aged just 15 and suffering from early symptoms of the disease, had to provide for his family.
He found a job in a plastics factory and worked 16 hours a day until he had enough money to start his own business.
With a loan of £4,300 scraped together from family members, he opened a plastic flower factory on the northern island of Hong Kong.
Some 13 years later he married a distant cousin Amy Chong Yuet-ming, whose wealthy manufacturing family had helped to put together part of the loan.
From there he bought up property on the island shortly after the Communist riots of 1967, believing that the slump in property prices would be short-lived.
His turning point came in 1979 when HSBC sold him Hutchison Whampoa, then a mid-sized conglomerate that owned many of the prime ports in Hong Kong.
The deal, which was allegedly financed by HSBC itself and led to Mr Li joining the company’s board, catapulted him into the premier league of global investors.
These assets allowed him to accumulate vast wealth and grow an international business empire using Hutchison Whampoa as a vehicle to buy and sell companies, ports, land and infrastructure.
His empire now has operations in more than 50 countries and employs almost 300,000 staff.
Of his latest venture, some analysts fear the mobile phone tie-up could reduce competition.
Telecoms expert Matthew Howett at research firm Ovum said: ‘The biggest concern will be the impact on consumers, particularly at the lower end of the market.’
The deal will still need to be cleared by competition authorities in Brussels.
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Why would anyone work so hard to become a billionaire only to rock $50 watches?
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