Li Ka-shing on Facebook

It's hard to imagine Li Ka-shing superpoking the likes of Stanley Ho, Lee Shiu Kee or Rupert Murdoch on Facebook, but his purchase of 0.4% of the social network is amusing. If he gets serious with the new media, there is no shortage of home-biased options, including the latest IPO of Alibaba.com in Hong Kong.

Perhaps he is fascinated by his own face being loaded on the profile pictures of some Facebook members, for real or psuedonym, bearing the same name as his.


Li Ka-shing clicks with social networking
By Tom Mitchell, Andrew Hill and Paul Betts
Published: December 4 2007 18:07 Last updated: December 4 2007 18:07

Li Ka-shing, Asia’s richest man, has pledged to donate a third of his fortune, or at least $8bn, to his eponymous charitable foundation.
Reports that the Li Ka Shing Foundation is prepared to pay 0.75 per cent of this largesse, or a piddly $60m, to buy an even piddlier 0.4 per cent stake in Facebook, the Palo Alto-based social networking site, highlight the septuagenarian tycoon’s fascination with new tricks.

From port containerisation to 3G mobile phone networks, Mr Li likes to bet on future trends: his new-found interest in the social networking phenomenon is but the latest example. At 79, an age when most people are thinking only of winding down, the tycoon still spends an inordinate amount of time contemplating how his grandchildren’s lives will be radically different from his own.

Some of these bets turn out better than others. Mr Li’s ports empire is now the world’s largest, while 3G remains unproven.

Mr Li’s choice of vehicle is also instructive. His charitable foundation is a repository for an increasingly diverse array of portfolio investments, ranging from Chinese state banks to California technology companies.

Buying a stake in Facebook through the foundation, rather than one of his companies – such as Hutchison Whampoa, Mr Li’s global conglomerate, or Tom Group, Hutch’s internet and media unit – suggests that for the time being he intends only to salt his Facebook shares away.