Hong Kong tycoon linked with O2 UK assets

Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing’s pursuit of mobile phone operator O2 in a potential £10bn deal represents his biggest move yet in a long buying spree of UK assets.

The 86-year-old entrepreneur first began acquiring UK firms some 20 years ago and his investments will top £33bn if he snaps up 02 from Spanish operator Telefonica.

The Chinese businessman, with a £22.1bn personal fortune, controls a range of UK investments that cover Superdrug, The Perfume Shop, Felixstowe port and mobile operator Three.

These firms are held by the two main holding companies he controls – Hutchison Whampoa and Cheung Kong Holdings – which together employ over 280,000 staff in 50 countries. Mr Li is dubbed Asia’s richest man.

If the 02 deal is successful a combination with Three would create the UK’s biggest mobile group with around 32m customers.

Mr Li has been a frequent investor in the UK and earlier this week his Cheung Kong Infrastructure group bought train rolling stock firm Eversholt for £2.5bn. This is one of the UK’s three main rolling stock firms who lease trains to the country’s major train operators such as Virgin Trains, FirstGroup and Stagecoach.

One of his earliest entries in the UK market was Hutchison’s £3.6bn investment to buy a licence for the 3 mobile phone network in 2000.

In 2002 he bought Superdrug and a number of other European stores from Dutch retailer Kruidvat Beheer for £830m.

The billionaire also holds a number of infrastructure holdings such as Northumbrian Water, which he bought in 2011 for £2.4bn.

He also has investments in Southern Water, Wales and West Utilities, UK Power Networks, and Thamesport and Harwich ports.

Mr Li was born in Chiu Chow, a coastal city in south eastern China in 1928, but at 12 fled with his family to Hong Kong to escape the Second World War.

By 15 he began work in a plastics trading firm and by 1950 he started his own industrial company, which built up to eventually hold an international portfolio of firms and investments.