Subscribe$60M for Facebook from HK
Written by Angus Lau December 3rd, 2007 . Tags: Hong Kong, invest, Web 2.0.
Who would have thought Facebook would be making news in Hong Kong?! Facebook taking money from Li Ka-shing, the money making machine. This is an interesting move from someone who made a majority of his fortune mainly from taking it out of Hong Kong people’s hands in the form of real estate, telecom, and supermarkets. It’s surprising to see this guy jump into the web, although his son Richard is well known for that with Tom.com and making a fortune from it back in the day.
Aside from the money talk, will this news pump some life into the Hong Kong web? I doubt it, but, I am sure people have read the headlines and saw that Asia/Hong Kong’s richest sees potential in the web. It’s some semi-good news and coming off the news of Alibaba, this should motivate a few more to head down the path of web entrepreneurship.
Will this also signal some (local) investors to start looking at what is happening here. I’ll admit the scene is rather dry but there are some promise in several sites here and a couple startups have already attracted foreign investors, such as EditGrid and Frenzoo.
Hi Angus - I don’t think iRichard was involved with Tom.com, he made money with PCCW and the StarTV sale to Murdoch. My understanding is the Face book deal was done via Solina Chau who runs the LKS foundation and also a founder of Tom.com
Li Ka Shing is very savvy internet investor. He invested in Joost, Skype, Priceline, now Facebook and others..
For him, it’s a no brainer, I reckon his 60M facebook investment will bring him at least a 4X return in 18 months, not to mention open doors for a Tom.com / Face Book collaboration in China.
And did you notice Tom.com was up around 40% on the news? He’s got his ROI already….
Maneck,
Thanks for giving me insights on Li Ka-shing. I never knew his foundation has made such investments. For some reason, I had the recollection back in the internet craze, that Richard made his fortune from Tom.com, must have got the wrong Li’s mixed up. And yes, I heard about the Tom.com stock up.
There you have it. I botched it (big time).
Thanks Maneck for correcting me.
Yes, Mr. Li is still smarter in tech investments than his son. Like Maneck mentioned he put money into Priceline.com which has its HK site here: www.priceline.com.hk
He’s #9 on the Billionair List and worth US$23 billion via Fortune: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/10/07billionaires_Li-Ka-shing_SO0W.html
But having done work with his company before, he may have signed off on the investment, but his tech savvy investment team are the ones out there looking for these deals. And frankly, he is a good guy to have on your team because he doesn’t have any immediate bias like Microsoft does. He just wants to make good old fashioned money.
Agree with lucas & maneck.
Li is very good in investing & I hope his recent move could stimulate the tech & web 2.0 investment in hk
Hi, Angus!
We’re also a start-up and was fortunate to get funded at this point. We’ve just come up with our initial product. It isn’t much in the moment but hopefully, it is jut a portent of bigger things to come.
Please check em out. You’re right. We need people who have the smarts to also have the courage to take risks and let the rest of the world know that they don’t own all he good ideas. Asians do have something to contribute, too.
More power.
alain
Mr. Li can’t go wrong with this deal — I remember that Tom Online made a bargain buy of the smoking remains of eBay in Mainland a few months ago for around $20 million (and as far as I know they still need to redefine their online portfolio).
Maybe history will repeat itself if they partner up with Facebook…
Angus, thumbs up for your blog (and for your involvement with Team and Concept, I got to know P.K. this year, such a nice chap), keep up the good work.
Cheers,
Lutz