Hong Kong: Victor Li's moment may have finally arrived.
The son of billionaire business executive Li Ka-shing is poised to inherit an empire spanning across more than 50 countries in businesses ranging from telecommunications to retail and ports.
The elder Li plans to step down as chairman of CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd by the time he turns 90 next year, according to The Wall Street Journal, a move that would be in line with comments he made a year ago when he said he might retire "today if I wanted to, in the next five minutes or whenever."
The patriarch, who spoke in a rare Bloomberg Television interview last year, said at the time that those worried about succession should note that his son had been working alongside him for 30 years and been taking care of his businesses full-time for the past few.
Victor was named as heir to the Li business five years ago.
While the company said yesterday that "no concrete timetable" had been set for the succession, Victor will assume control of a far-flung group of business making him one of the most influential business executives in Asia.
He'd also be filling the shoes of a man who's known as "Superman" in Hong Kong business circles for his deal-making and managerial acumen.
The retirement of Hong Kong's richest man would mark the end of an era.
Throughout his storied career, the elder Li has amassed a $32.6 billion fortune that ranks second in Asia after that of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's Jack Ma, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. More broadly, Li is wealthier than the likes of former Microsoft Corp CEO Steve Ballmer or billionaire investor George Soros.
"On the whole it would be a bit of a shock," said Richard Harris, Hong Kong-based chief executive officer of Port Shelter Investment Management. "Not only is he a local entrepreneur who built things up in terms of Hong Kong, but he really got it in terms of turning his empire into a global empire rather than just a big company based in Hong Kong."
In an illustration of how closely the elder Li is tracked in Hong Kong, throngs of TV cameras were lined up at the lobby of his headquarters building within an hour of the WSJ report yesterday, aiming to catch a glimpse and sound bite from the famed tycoon.
Shares of CK Hutchison fell 0.2% to HK$98.50 in Hong Kong yesterday.
A refugee to Hong Kong who swept factory floors as a teenager in the 1940s, Li rose to head a global business empire that built skyscrapers, provided mobile-phone services and controlled ports across the globe. He first made his first fortune through a plastic-flower manufacturer that later became Asia's biggest maker of the ornaments.
After some well-timed property investments cemented his wealth, he began expanding his empire into retail, energy, telecommunications, media and biotechnology. By 2016, he employed 270,000 people in more than 50 countries.
Despite his success, Li also symbolised the wealth inequality in a city known for having the most unaffordable private housing in the world and where business is dominated by a handful of families.
In an interview last year, he called for higher corporate taxes to help tackle wealth inequality.
Li was born July 29, 1928, in Chiu Chow, a city in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, which adjoins Hong Kong. In 1940, his family fled to Hong Kong to escape Japanese invaders, though the Japanese occupied Hong Kong by the following year.
His son Victor, 52, is currently deputy chairman at CK Hutchison and Cheung Kong Property Holdings Ltd. He's also chairman at the CK Infrastructure Holdings Ltd unit and CK Life Sciences Int'l Holdings Inc.
Prior to that, the younger Li made headlines in 1996, when he was kidnapped. The kidnapper later fled to mainland China, only to be apprehended and executed there.