Deptford's new overlord (or, The new Chinese imperialism)

Li Ka-shing is the man buying Deptford's Convoys Wharf.

According to Bloomberg:

Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing has sunk $25 billion into his two-year-old high-speed mobile-phone unit. The result so far is $8.7 billion in losses.
Li, 77, chairman of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., built an empire valued at more than $100 billion. For all his success in real estate, ports and oil, he has failed to make money in high-speed telecommunications. Hutchison is struggling to turn around a wireless unit dogged by price wars in Italy and the U.K., and some investors are skeptical about initial share sales Li plans in those countries...
Li, dubbed "Superman'' by such Hong Kong Chinese-language newspapers as Apple Daily, told reporters in Hong Kong yesterday that he'd sell a stake in Hutchison's Italian 3G unit in an initial public offering this year. He said on March 31 in Hong Kong when announcing 2004 earnings that an IPO of the U.K. operator would follow...
Profit for Hutchison as a whole rose to HK$11.8 billion from HK$10.8 billion, helped by gains at its port unit. Li's holding company, Cheung Kong Holdings Ltd., said yesterday that first-half profit rose 52 percent to HK$10.37 billion, boosted by real-estate gains and Hutchison's higher earnings. Cheung Kong benefited from surging property prices in Hong Kong, where the average value of a small apartment rose 34 percent last year, according to Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. Cheung Kong, Hong Kong's largest property developer by market value, owns 50 percent of Hutchison...

Li Ka-shing is a man who profits from misery, turning political tragedy into economic value:

Risky bets have paid off before for Chaozhou, China-born Li, who swept factory floors after arriving in Hong Kong as a refugee in 1940. He made his first fortune in 1967 by buying Hong Kong real estate after prices collapsed following riots tied to China's Cultural Revolution. He did the same in 1989 after China's Tiananmen Square crackdown caused prices to tumble again.

The story so far:May: Sarf London and global capital 2, June: Convoys Wharf Update (South London and global capitalism), July: Deptfordism, August: Deptfordism 2

See also: Li Ka-shing, Cheung Kong Bought $200 Mln of PetroChina Shares, Hutch lords over 12 mn Indians, Caribbean Net News: China buying political dominion over the Caribbean!

Other Deptford news: Give it to us sexy, shiny, and in public!

Tags: sarf london, london