Xu Weiping: Chinese tycoon who charmed Boris into £1bn contract

Self-styled 'deep thinking tycoon' and committed Anglophile is planning to invest £1bn redeveloping London’s Royal Albert Dock near City airport.

A central aim of David Cameron's trip to China is to secure support from cash-rich investors to fund new infrastructure in Britain. Doubtless he'd like more along the lines of Xu Weiping, the self-styled "deep thinking tycoon" and committed Anglophile whose company, Advanced Business Park (ABP), is planning to invest £1bn redeveloping London's Royal Albert Dock near City airport.

Mr Xu, as he is universally known, is thinking big, says the Evening Standard. His goal is to transform the dock into an "Asian business zone" with retail and leisure facilities on tap. Xu, a dapper fiftysomething, set his heart on the scheme when he visited London in 2008. But he had to endure endless bureaucratic wrangles before finally signing a contract with London Mayor Boris Johnson in June. He's keen to get cracking on construction and has hired architects Terry Farrell and Partners. They can't match him on imaginative vision, he says, but they "do great details, so that's fine".

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