The story of Li Ka-shing, the billionaire who made early bets on Facebook, Spotify

With a personal wealth of US$30 billion, Li Ka-shing is one of those tycoons who’s an icon for entrepreneurs in all sectors.

“The most important enjoyment for me,” Li once said, “is to work hard and make more profit.”

Here’s how the Hong Kong industrialist built his empire and then made a beeline for the tech industry, including early investments in Facebook, Spotify, and Slack.

Fight and flight

Born in southern China’s Guangdong province in June 1928, the young Li had humble beginnings as the son of a primary school principal.

Li in 1975 / Photo credit: South China Morning Post

The family fled the Japanese invasion in 1940, heading to Hong Kong. Aged 12, Li started work at an uncle’s plastic watch-strap company, soon dropping out of school so that his income can support the family.

His father died from tuberculosis in 1942, shortly after Japanese troops seized control of Hong Kong, then a British territory.

Li meets Queen Elizabeth II in an undated photo. / Photo credit: Investors Conundrum

In 1950, the 22-year-old Li started his own business. After rising from a salesman to become manager of one of his uncle’s factories, Li used everything he’d learned in the past decade about plastics to start manufacturing plastic toys, before shifting to artificial flowers. He then set up his venture with about US$50,000.

Start of the empire

Hong Kong in the 1950s was roiled by riots amid a huge influx of refugees from China’s civil war, compounding already terrible, cramped conditions in the British colony. Li leapt on the chance to snap up commercial real estate on the cheap, giving birth to his real estate empire.

Li then rode Hong Kong’s 1960s boom as it morphed into an Asian tiger. His company evolved towards real estate development, building residential, office, retail, industrial, and hotel properties. In 1971, his firm launched an IPO in Hong Kong.

First big buy

In 1979, Li’s firm acquired a stake in 19th-century British trading house Hutchison Whampoa. It was a remarkable cultural milestone, showing Hong Kong’s growing strength on the basis of its own entrepreneurs.

Over the next decade, Li’s deal-making earned him the “Superman” nickname. Over the ’80s and ’90s, Li soon controlled much of the property dealing, port traffic, electric utilities, and telecommunications networks in Hong Kong.

Tech turn

Li friends Facebook in 2007