HONG KONG: Billionaire Richard Li, who broke away from his famous father Li Ka-shing decades ago to build his own business empire, is taking a page out of his dad’s playbook by further expanding outside Hong Kong.
Since last year, the younger Li has stepped up investment in South-East Asia, agreeing to pay US$3bil for a Thai insurance business and extending his insurance operations in Vietnam and Indonesia.
He was part of a bid for a digital-banking permit in Singapore and – most recently – has teamed up with PayPal Holdings Inc co-founder Peter Thiel to establish a US$595mil blank-check firm for acquiring one or more South-East Asian companies.