Ordinary Gweilo

Another slightly puzzling story from the somewhat unusual world of Hong Kong public companies. After the recent shuffling of assets by Hutchison Whampoa, another member of the family is following suit according to The Standard.

It seems that PCCW will revert to being a fixed-line telecom and Internet company, and that Richard Li will end up with the property assets. To paraphrase what the Standard has to say:

That would leave the original Hong Kong Telecom business largely where it was before Li took it over and renamed it as PCCW in 2000 – an ailing fixed-line telecommunications company with nowhere to expand to.

It’s not that long ago that PCCW was rumoured to be about to take over Cable & Wireless, but now it looks more likely to be a takeover target itself. Are Singapore Telecom still interested?

As far as the property deal is concerned, it seems that the government won’t stop it:

It is understood the government would allow any transfer of Cyberport as long as Richard Li holds at least 35 per cent in the project. The total cost of developing the 24-hectare project was estimated at HK$15.8 billion and PCCW said it had funded HK$4.5 billion so far.

I suppose that having given Richard Li the opportunity to develop an important high-tech hub for Hong Kong, it would be risky to trust this important job to someone less qualified…

Funny isn’t it, how the timing of these deals work out. It reminds me of the deals whereby Harvey Nichols ended up being owned privately by Dickson Poon rather than by his public company Dickson Concepts (which is however going to open a Harvey Nichols store in Hong Kong).