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Technology Stocks : PCW - Pacific Century CyberWorks Limited -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ms.smartest.person who wrote (532)	3/9/2001 3:48:35 PM
From: ms.smartest.person	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2248

[Another oldie 2/29/2000] Golden boy aims to dominate the Internet in Asia Published February 29, 2000 He is the son of a billionaire and he was in the headlines for hiring Whitney Houston to sing at his millennium party. But now he has set out to buy something much bigger than a pop star with his fathers's money. He wants to dominate the Internet in Asia: his planned $35 billion (£22 billion) deal to buy Cable & Wireless's Hong Kong arm would catapult him towards that aim. Thirty-three-year-old Mr Li is known for his showmanship. His father, Li Ka-shing, spent decades building up a property empire that qualifies him as Asia's fourth richest man but Richard Li has shunned bricks and mortar in favour of the virtual world. If he pulls off the deal with C&W, he and his father will together control a quarter of all shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Time magazine has called Mr Li "the Bill Gates of Asia" but he has so far only talked himself into the title rather than earned it. The younger Li began his career in television and focused on the Internet less than a year ago. Yet already his company, CyberWorks, is valued on the stock market at more than Amazon.com, the US online retailer. The valuation is based on hope rather than mathematics since there are few figures on which this infant empire can be judged. Investors are betting on Mr Li and his genes and connections rather than any proven income stream. Established companies such as Intel and Hikari Psushin, Japan's second largest Internet company, have decided it is worth backing the Li plan and have invested in CyberWorks. With help from his father, Mr Li has acquired stakes in a wide range of Internet businesses. He claims to be positioning his company to dominate the telephony market in Asia. Cable & Wireless HKT, the Hong Kong arm, could form the centre of a global empire headed by Mr Li and linked to Vodafone, the UK mobile phone group. The young cyber-tycoon, who is said to have already followed his father into the billionaires club, does little to disguise his ambition. He is a regular at the World Economic Forum's annual Davos conference and keeps a picture of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in his private dining room. Until recently, Mr Li was often described as Asia's most eligible bachelor. But he has now acquired the one thing missing from his portfolio - a woman. Karen Lam, one of his employees, has been given a fast-track promotion from the boardroom to the bedroom. After studying computer engineering at Stanford University, Mr Li made his name in the early 1990s by building up Star TV, a pan-Asian television network. In 1995, he sold the network to News Corporation, parent company of The Times. In April 1999, he decided to turn the sleepy telecoms equipment manufacturer Tricom Holdings, which he had just acquired, into the world's biggest broadband Internet access provider. Stock punters sent the share price soaring more than 1,400 per cent. As a result, the younger Mr Li now runs the seventh-largest company in Hong Kong in terms of market capitalisation. In nine months, he created - on paper, at least - wealth that rivals what his father accumulated during a 50-year span. Matthew McGarvey, Internet analyst at International Data Corp, said: "It's good to be the king. He has the name, he's got the power, and it's not that complex a strategy." But Mr Li also has enemies. In Hong Kong, many observers have suggested that the Li family often profits from a close relationship with the Communist Government in Beijing. The elder Li is a big investor in the Chinese capital. The younger Li is now said to have received the blessing of Communist leaders for his telecoms bid on the ground that Beijing would prefer the Hong Kong phone group to remain in Chinese hands. Certainly, when Mr Li came to Beijing last week he received a welcome fit for a head of state or a pop star. He was greeted at the Great Hall of People with thunderous applause. Children mobbed the tycoon in fits of adulation. At a conference in Beijing, Mr Li apparently received more applause than any other speaker even though he made the shortest speech of the entire day. Furthermore, as a Cantonese speaker he had difficulties communicating in Mandarin, the type of Chinese spoken in Beijing. His speech was fed to him phonetically through an earpiece. For many critics, Mr Li's trip to Beijing at a crucial time in the bid battle for Cable & Wireless HKT confirmed that he must be the Communists' golden boy. Some reports suggested that he had become involved in bidding for the company at the suggestion of Beijing, which was concerned at the Singaporean attempt to buy the phone operator. Anson Chan, the top Hong Kong legislator, was forced to make an official declaration that Beijing had given no instructions on the potential merger. She said: "I received no instructions from the central Government. Nor do I believe that the central Government will give us instructions or intervene in this matter." Mr Li, too, was forced to defend his unquestionably privileged position. He said: "I just want to say one thing. We will not do anything to damage the public interest." Undoubtedly, for someone whose family virtually controls the Hong Kong stock exchange, public interest and private interest are often the same. OLIVER AUGUST times-archive.co.uk