Hi Elmatador, <<I'm afraid that Superman met his Kryptonite, Jay. 3G may make Li Ka Shing suffer!>>
Not so fast with judgement. For folks in Li's strata, every storm promises a new field of opportunities.
My guess is that:
(a) as Li sold high on his Orange, VoiceStream,
(b) had his son take Hong Kong Telecom by floating worthless Pacific Century paper,
(c) had his mistress take cash from gullible investors by floating Tom.com, which is now, in effect, a billion plus USD wallet used slowly to buy media and advertising properties in Hong Kong/China, and
(d) bought a local gold trading/processing company with spare change,
he can now devote himself to start preparing to issue cash call rights from all his newly publicly listed/relisted companies, plus Hutchison and Cheung Kong Properties, and CKInfrastructure, etc, without explaining much about what he is going to do with the money, thus making investors unwilling to cough up for the cash call, especially after having been made shy by Wall Street and Main Street, Japan and USA.
He will then take up the cash call rights (priced cheaply, of course) himself, enlarge his percentage holdings enormously in all his publicly listed, but privately controlled companies, and dominate even more than his current effective control holding of the Hang Seng Index constituent shares (he is now controlling about 45% of all market cap of Hang Seng Index constituent shares) to actual simple majority control.
Between Hutchsion Telecom and PCCW, Li family already controls 75% of fixed line and 75% of mobile communication in and out of Hong Kong. By increasing his equity stake through cheaply priced cash calls, he is than set up to make some deals on the mainland, or even easier, announce some deals on the mainland that he has reached verbal agreements for, place a secondary offering of expanded shares, promising the mainland horizon as Maurice does, and wha ... a whole new field of plenty.
No, Superman has big plans, the taking has not even gotten started yet, and the poor market will help him to take more with less, without moral dilemma.
Advise to anybody who feels comfortable investing in Hong Kong, buy when Li buys, buy what Li buys. Li's right-hand man, a guy by the name of Fok (*my neighbor two houses down, with two connected houses. No, he does not know I exist, but I know he does not seem worried about the Storm), responsible talking Li out of selling out of Orange during the hard slog in the early 90s, is paid hundreds of millions per year, hiring the best the Goldmans and Merrills has to offer, and has not, so far, done bad deals.
Go to cash in the meantime, because cash calls not surprisingly require cash.
Chugs, Jay
* No Elmat, to anticipate your question, I cannot just drop your future business plan off in his living room. His bodyguards will be puzzled why a Filipino houseboy-looking French Creole Trinidadian Chinese is trying to flog a geewhiz telecom plan:0) |
