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

To: ms.smartest.person who wrote (1584)	7/10/2001 12:06:29 PM
From: ms.smartest.person	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2248

Tuesday, July 10, 2001 Familiar trait in thoughts of chairmen Li STEPHEN SEAWRIGHT Like father like son goes the old cliche and it looks like it might have taken hold with the Li family. When Pacific Century CyberWorks chairman Richard Li Tzar-kai took questions from the Press last week on the possibility of further job cuts, many reporters thought they heard the echo of Li Ka-shing. "I don't have such plans today," the junior Mr Li replied cautiously, leaving open the possibility that he may have such ideas tomorrow. Such open-ended replies have been the hallmark of Mr Li senior over the years. Asked last year if he would increase his stake in Cheung Kong to as much as 50 per cent Mr Li senior gave an open-ended reply: "If I have enough money, I will certainly do it." Obviously Lai See thinks Mr Li senior could make the purchases if he really wanted but he will decide what constitutes "enough money" in his own time. Such replies are in contrast to the Mr Li junior of yesteryear who said if CyberWorks did a good job in building up the areas of Internet protocol backbone or B2C operations "the company should double in value". This proved to be a rather optimistic, as CyberWorks' shares slumped. Has this contributed to Mr Li junior's more cautious recent approach? And now that Mr Li junior is handling things more like his father, will the CyberWorks share price start performing like Mr Li senior's companies? The jury's still out on that one. Hedge of reality: The intricacies of hedge fund events would bore most people but reporters received a bit of light relief at a Press launch yesterday. But then with the launch of something called The Kangaroo Fund you'd expect some comical moments. Surprise, surprise the product is aimed at Australians but despite the name none of the animals were brought in to promote the fund. The presentation was held by the Bank of Bermuda to launch the fund, which is an incubator for hedge funds, according to the promotional blurb. The Press conference at The Landmark got off to a standard start with a spiel delivered by Bank of Bermuda executives about the fund followed by questions from the Press. But just as the public relations team were preparing to wrap up the Press conference disaster struck. Strange noises started emanating from the public address speakers - somehow the sound of the Cartoon Network television channel was being blasted out. "It sounded like Godzilla was in the room," said one bemused journalist afterwards. The public relations team struggled to remove the sound of cartoon characters from the room and eventually succeeded after five minutes. Given the image of hedge funds in Hong Kong after the government fought some of the riskier ones during its stock market intervention of August 1998 the cartoon characters are probably more welcome. Unpowered: News reaches Lai See that the public relations chief of electricity generator CLP Holdings, Sandra Mak, is leaving the firm after seven years. Ms Mak's surprise departure after being one of the longest serving members of the PR department was announced to staff yesterday with her last day due on the coming Friday. She has yet to line up her next job and will go on holiday first. Ms Mak's departure is believed to be part of an overall management restructuring that has being carried out over the past year. In the firm's last annual report the company had appointed seven new senior management including the new managing director, Andrew Brandler. The new management is attempting to diversify CLP's operations as revenue from electricity generation is expected to fall as that market is liberalised in Hong Kong. We just hope CLP's new power structure doesn't affect our power supply. David Evans is on holiday. Tel: 2565 2670 Fax: 2565 1624 Email: laisee@scmp.com