Li Ka-shing: Hong Kong's Superman won’t hang up his cape

Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing had hinted at his desire to retire. Now, caught between the authorities in Beijing and the pro-democracy protests, he finds himself in a tricky situation. 

Li Ka-shing © Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

(Image credit: Li Ka-shing © Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

When Hong Kong's richest man bumped into a group of children on their way to a dance competition last month, he decided on a whim "to buy them all a present and pay for their trip to the tournament", says The Daily Telegraph. That sort of "spontaneous gift", estimated to be worth $120,000, would have been unthinkable in his earlier life. But having built up his conglomerate, CK Asset Holdings, into one of Hong Kong's major corporate beasts, it was a mere bagatelle for the billionaire known locally as "Superman".

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.