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Showing posts with label Li Ka-shing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Li Ka-shing. Show all posts

Thursday 1 January 2015

The Wealthy get wealthier

The richest people on Earth got richer in 2014, adding $92 billion to their collective fortune in the face of falling energy prices and geopolitical turmoil incited by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

 Video: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/popout/4PRJi7eqTcWSR0cwVL05iA/10.938/

The net worth of the world’s 400 wealthiest billionaires on Dec. 29 stood at $4.1 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the planet’s richest.

The biggest gainer was Jack Ma, the co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., China’s largest e-commerce company. Ma, a former English teacher who started the Hangzhou-based company in his apartment in 1999, added $25.1 billion to his fortune, riding a 56 percent surge in the company’s shares since its September initial public offering.

Ma, 50, with a $28.7 billion fortune, briefly passed Li Ka-shing as Asia’s richest person.

“I am nothing but happy when young people from China do well,” Li, 86, said through his spokeswoman in Hong Kong.

Global stocks rose in 2014, with the MSCI World Index advancing 4.3 percent during the year to close at 1,731.71 on Dec. 29. The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index rose 13 percent to close at 2,090.57. The Stoxx Europe 600 gained 4.9 percent to close at 344.27.

Two of the year’s other biggest gainers were Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg of the U.S. Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., added $13.7 billion to his net worth after the Omaha, Nebraska-based company soared 28 percent as the dozens of operating businesses the 84-year-old chairman bought over the past five decades churned out record profit.

Gates, Slim

Buffett passed Mexican telecommunications billionaire Carlos Slim on Dec. 5 to become the world’s second-richest person. Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp., was up $9.1 billion during the year. The 59-year-old remains the world’s richest person with a $87.6 billion fortune.

Zuckerberg, the hoodie-wearing chief executive officer of the world’s largest social-networking company, gained $10.6 billion as the Menlo Park, California-based business rose to a record on Dec. 22.

Bloomberg Billionaires Gainers of 2014
Bloomberg Billionaires Gainers of 2014

This year Facebook made headway in mobile, a business that has flourished as mobile advertising increased and marketing initiatives expanded with applications and video. Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion has also been paying off: A Citigroup Inc. analyst said on Dec. 19 the photo-sharing app is worth $35 billion.

Russia Woes

Zuckerberg’s company faced a challenge in Russia, where the blocking of a Facebook page promoting a Russian opposition rally highlighted the challenges the social network faces as Putin cracks down on the Internet amid a looming economic downturn. The European Union and U.S. limited Russian companies’ access to financing to punish Putin after he annexed Crimea in March. Russia’s troubles have been worsened by the corresponding plunge in the price of oil, a bedrock of the country’s economy.

Nobody was hit harder than Vladimir Evtushenkov. Once Russia’s 14th-richest person, the 66-year-old lost 80 percent of his wealth, dropping him from the Bloomberg ranking. He was sentenced to house arrest by a Moscow court in September after a money-laundering investigation connected to the $2.5 billion purchase of shares in oil producer OAO Bashneft.

The court also ruled in favor of nationalizing his stake in Bashneft, which he controlled through publicly traded AFK Sistema. Evtushenkov’s fortune has fallen $8.1 billion, the most of any Russian in 2014.

Leonid Mikhelson has been the biggest loser in dollar terms among those remaining in the country’s 20 richest, dropping $7.8 billion since the start of the year. The 59-year-old is the chief executive officer of OAO Novatek, Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer, which fell 44 percent during the year. He has a $10.1 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg ranking.

Western Sanctions

Viktor Vekselberg surpassed Alisher Usmanov as Russia’s richest person after Usmanov’s MegaFon OAO lost almost half its value since June. Vekselberg is worth $14.1 billion, while Usmanov fell 32 percent to $13.8 billion.

One of only a few Russians among the world’s 400 richest who gained in 2014 was aluminum billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who added $1.6 billion as his Hong Kong-based United Co. Rusal rose 122 percent. Deripaska has increased his fortune to $8.2 billion. He’s the world’s 154th-richest person.

“The reputation of Russian business in the west has become worse, and will continue to get worse,” said Stanislav Belkovsky, a Kremlin adviser during Putin’s first term who now consults for Moscow’s Institute for National Strategy, a research firm. “That means that the capabilities for Russia’s billionaires to run businesses abroad are going to decrease.”

Adelson Falls

Belkovsky says Putin will try to compensate the country’s sanctioned businessmen by giving them access to different state resources.

“The competition for resources will increase, as will the redistribution of ownership,” he said.

Russian billionaires weren’t the only ones to suffer losses. Sheldon Adelson, the gambling mogul who controls Las Vegas Sands Corp., the world’s largest casino company, fell $8.7 billion as the Las Vegas-based company dropped 25 percent.

Macau’s casinos are looking at their first down year in revenue since the market was opened to foreign operators in 2002, after China’s President Xi Jinping cracked down on corruption on the mainland and high-rollers shunned the gambling enclave. More than half of the company’s 2013 $13.8 billion in revenue comes from Macau.

Bezos, Musk

Adelson’s decline was followed by Jeffrey Bezos, the chairman of Amazon.com Inc. The 50-year-old had $7.2 billion trimmed from his fortune as the Seattle-based company lost ground in the cloud computing market to crosstown competitor Microsoft Corp.

Bezos, whose Blue Origin LLC space company won a contract in November to deploy rockets from NASA launchpads in Florida, is ranked 21st in the world with a $28.7 billion fortune. Blue Origin will develop a space vehicle that isn’t scheduled to be ready until after 2020.

Elon Musk’s space-exploration company is close to winning the certification it needs to begin deploying satellites for the U.S. military, according to an Air Force official. A contract win by Hawthorne,
California-based SpaceX would be the first since the Pentagon opened the program in late 2012 to as many as 14 competitive missions.

Musk added $2.9 billion to his net worth, most of which was the result of a 50 percent gain by Tesla Motors Inc., the world’s largest electric-car manufacturer.

Chinese Gains

China’s 10 richest people have added almost $48 billion combined year-to-date. Following Ma’s $25.1 billion gain, technology entrepreneurs Richard Liu of online retailer JD.com and Robin Li of Baidu Inc. added a combined $8 billion.

The title of Asia’s richest person could be challenged by Wang Jianlin, whose Dalian Wanda Group Co. staged an initial public offering of its commercial properties division this month. An IPO for Wanda Cinema Line Co. is planned for early 2015. Wang has a net worth of $25.3 billion, gaining $12.8 billion during the year.

Alibaba’s surge minted at least three new billionaires this year, including Simon Xie, an Alibaba co-founder and the second-biggest shareholder of the finance affiliate that owns Alipay. Xie, 44, owns 9.7 percent of Zhejiang Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group Co., the parent of Alipay, according to company filings obtained by Bloomberg News.

Hidden Billionaires

Small & Micro CEO Lucy Peng and Jonathan Lu, CEO of Alibaba, each controls almost 4 percent in Small & Micro Financial, according to filings submitted by the company in Hangzhou. They also both own less than 1 percent of Alibaba, which made them new 2014 billionaires.

Bloomberg News uncovered 86 new or hidden billionaires who had never appeared on an international wealth ranking. Among them were the six heirs to a $13 billion Monaco fortune that were unveiled after the family’s matriarch, Helene Pastor, was gunned down in a parking lot in Nice, France, in May. The fortune spans two branches of the Pastor family, which built much of Monaco’s skyline and owns thousands of apartments in the city-state.

Carlos Pellas became Nicaragua’s first billionaire rebuilding his family sugar mill and parlaying the proceeds into a new bank, BAC-Credomatic, which, by 2005, was one of the largest financial institutions in Central America. He sold it to General Electric Co. in a deal completed between 2005 and 2010 for about $1.7 billion.

Latin America

His rise to riches was almost interrupted by a violent 1989 plane crash that killed more than 130 people and left his wife with 62 bone fractures and skin melting off her face.

Other Latin America fortunes that emerged include five billionaires from Brazil -- Joesley, Wesley, Valere, Vanessa and Vivianne Batista -- who created the world’s biggest beef producer after making more than $17 billion in acquisitions. Their company, JBS SA, rode the biggest stock rally on Brazil’s Bovespa index this year, jumping 30 percent year-to-date, fueled by surging beef prices and Russia’s lifting of a ban on Brazil meat-processing plants.

A surge in real estate and corporate valuations elevated the fortunes of at least five Blackstone Group LP billionaires. Co-founder and chairman Stephen Schwarzman added $926 million as the company rose 7.6 percent. The performance, along with surging art values, made James Tomilson Hill, Blackstone’s vice chairman who runs the company’s $64 billion hedge fund business, a billionaire. Jonathan Gray, who runs the firm’s real estate division, is worth $1.5 billion.

Strong Dollar

Real estate is seen as one way the wealthy could make further gains in 2015.
“The fact that interest rates are going to remain low, there might be some opportunities, especially with residential real estate in Europe,” Efrat Peled, the chairman of Arison Investments, said in a phone interview from her office in Tel Aviv.

Peled, who manages more than $2.5 billion in assets for Shari Arison, says a strong U.S. dollar should give some foreign markets a boost.

“Exports are better when the dollar is strong,” she said.

Whether interest rates stay low remains a looming question moving into 2015. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen appears poised to raise interest rates for the first time in almost a decade, and prognosticators are convinced Treasury yields have nowhere to go except up. Their calls for higher yields next year are the most aggressive since 2009, when U.S. debt securities suffered record losses, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg
Billionaire Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. in 2014. 

Tuesday 4 December 2012

Learning from a truly great entrepreneur

The ninth richest man in the world Li Ka-shing spoke of his humble beginnings to an empire built on shipping, banking, construction, satellite TV and real estate.

Defying the odds: Li with CKGSB dean Xiang Bing (second from left) at an event marking the 10th anniversary of the school in Beijing. - CHOW HOW BAN/The Star

IT was difficult to understand Li Ka-shing speaking in Mandarin.

I would have appreciated his wisdom more if he spoke in Cantonese at the 10th anniversary celebration of Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing recently.

Except for Li’s “broken” Mandarin, I was captivated along with the crowd, who packed the hall to listen to what this legendary Hong Kong tycoon had to say.

He started by telling a story of his childhood and how he defied the odds predicted by a fortune teller.

“When I was 14, a fortune teller from our hometown told my mother that it might be difficult for me to have any big success as I was listless and slim to bare bones.

“My mother had lost her husband not long ago and the soothsayer’s remarks made her very miserable. She then consoled and encouraged me: ‘Ah Shing, it’s hard to predict one’s destiny and God will surely reward kind and hardworking people. If life is really hard for you, your family is there for you.’

“Of course, I trusted my mother but I had even greater faith in myself.

“I believed that the future we build for ourselves is our only destiny,” he said.

It was a simple story yet it made a huge impact on the students of the school.

The story explains how this boy from Chaozhou in Guangdong province persevered during the Japanese Occupation and later worked as a salesman before founding his plastics manufacturing factory and eventually building the Cheung Kong business empire that includes shipping, banking, construction, satellite TV and real estate.

The 84-year-old billionaire, who was ranked by Forbes as the ninth richest man in the world this year with an estimated fortune of US$25.5bil (RM77.6bil), said that tomorrow would just be another new day but the future would be something that one beholds and works on to improve himself, chase his dream and create a destiny of his own.

He said once a person attained success, he would have to move on with other goals and think of what self-values he could contribute to society.

“Looking back at my life, it was like a dream but certainly not. Seventy years have passed by and the slim and listless boy who was looked down by his fellow countryman has relied on work and self-confidence to make himself stronger yet lower his ego in pursuing his dream,” he said.

This was perhaps Li’s third official speech, entitled “The hero of action”, at his meeting with Cheung Kong students. Li and his Li Ka Shing Foundation donated a great deal of money in the founding of the school in 2002.

In his first speech entitled “The art of making money” 10 years ago, Li said that as business leaders, they would need to possess foresightedness, innovativeness and international perspective and take good control of the latest and most accurate information to make the right decisions, while maintaining a good rapport with their employees.

Li’s second speech – “The art of devoting” – delivered in 2004, touched on the spirit of giving back to society after one had amassed a fortune. He said there were businessmen who became wealthy by doing illegal business in Hong Kong but these people would falter faster compared to those who upheld their principles of doing proper business.

From the art of making money to the art of giving back and now back to the very courage to make the first move and challenge the odds, the students have certainly learned a spectrum of knowledge and experience from one of the most respectable tycoons in China.

At the 10th anniversary celebration, another legendary entrepreneur Liu Chuanzhi also offered his advice to the students, professors and staff of the school.

The founder of the Lenovo Group, which is the second largest computer maker in the world, said many senior executives in Lenovo were not trained in business administration but the emergence of graduate schools in China in the past decade had provided them with a chance to take up executive MBA programmes.

“My hope for all graduate business schools is that they are not only able to teach their students how to cook but more importantly how to come out with the recipe,” he said.
The crowd applauded at the end of Liu’s address, awaiting their turn to build an empire of their own in this opportune era in China.

Made In China
By CHOW HOW BAN The Star/Asia News Network

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