Li Ka-shing

Li Ka-shing
Born	13 6 1928 (age 98 years old (as of 2026) ) Chaozhou, China
Occupation	businessman, philanthropist
Known for	Founder of Cheung Kong; former chairman of CK Hutchison Holdings; Li Ka Shing Foundation
Children	Victor Li (son)

Hong Kong businessman; founder of the Cheung Kong group and former chairman of CK Hutchison Holdings and CK Asset Holdings

Li Ka-shing (born 13 June 1928) is a Hong Kong businessman who founded the Cheung Kong group. He chaired CK Hutchison Holdings and CK Asset Holdings until he retired in 2018, and remains senior adviser to both.^[1]^[2] On 20 October 2026 the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list ranked Li Ka-shing 38th in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$48.81 billion; Forbes lists the source of wealth as Diversified.^[1]^[3] In the annual World's Billionaires list published in 2026, Forbes had ranked Li Ka-shing 42nd, at US$47 billion.^[4]

Early life

Forbes gives his birthplace as Chaozhou, China. It reports that he fled China with his family at the age of 12, and that two years later his father died; his father had been a primary-school principal in China and later worked in a watch factory.^[1] Forbes records that Li did not finish secondary school.^[1]

Business career

Forbes reports that in 1950, at the age of 21, Li started Cheung Kong Plastics, named after the Yangtze River, with US$6,500 in savings and loans from relatives.^[1] The group's 2018 retirement announcement said he had led the CK Group as chairman for 46 years, "on a steady path of diversification and globalisation". It added that he would continue as senior adviser for an annual fee of HK$5,000.^[2] He stepped down as CK Hutchison chairman at the annual general meeting of 10 May 2018. CNBC noted that he was popularly known as "Superman" and that his elder son, Victor Li, then 53, was taking over a conglomerate with interests in ports, telecoms, property and retail, including the Watsons chain.^[5] CK Hutchison's directors' page describes Li as senior adviser and a substantial shareholder.^[6] Forbes says the group employs more than 300,000 people in more than 50 countries. It reports that Li took five minutes in 2007 to decide to invest in Facebook, and that he also invested in Siri and Spotify.^[1]

2025 ports sale

On 4 March 2025 CK Hutchison and a consortium of BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners and Terminal Investment Limited announced agreements in principle for the consortium to buy Hutchison Port Holdings' 90% interest in Panama Ports Company, which runs the Balboa and Cristóbal terminals on the Panama Canal. The consortium would also take CK Hutchison's 80% interest in companies running 43 ports in 23 countries, at an enterprise value of US$22.8 billion.^[7] The Guardian reported that the deal followed pressure from Donald Trump over Chinese influence on the canal. It said that on 14 March the Beijing-backed Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao published a commentary attacking the sale, which China's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office reposted, and that CK Hutchison's shares fell more than 6%.^[8] In July 2025 the AP reported that the exclusive negotiating period had expired, that Chinese anti-monopoly authorities were reviewing the deal, and that CK Hutchison was seeking a major strategic investor from mainland China to join the consortium.^[9]

Wealth

Forbes lists the source of his wealth as diversified holdings and describes him as one of the most influential businessmen in Asia.^[1]

Wealth history

Forbes has included this entry in its annual World's Billionaires list in 26 of the editions from 2001 to 2026 checked for this profile, starting with 2001. The table gives the rank and estimated net worth in each annual list.^[4]^[1]

Forbes estimates by list year
Year	World's Billionaires rank	Net worth (US$ bn)
2001	18	12.6
2002	23	10.0
2003	28	7.8
2004	19	12.4
2005	22	13.0
2006	10	18.8
2007	9	23.0
2008	11	26.5
2009	16	16.2
2010	14	21.0
2011	11	26.0
2012	9	25.5
2013	8	31.0
2014	20	31.0
2015	17	33.3
2016	20	27.1
2017	19	31.2
2018	23	34.9
2019	28	31.7
2020	35	21.7
2021	43	33.7
2022	37	34.8
2023	33	38.0
2024	38	37.3
2025	40	38.9
2026	42	47.0

Philanthropy

The Li Ka Shing Foundation says that since 1980 Li has put more than HK$30 billion into education, medical, charitable and anti-poverty projects, more than 80% of them in mainland China and Hong Kong.^[10] Forbes puts the foundation's donations at more than US$3.8 billion.^[1] The foundation co-developed Shantou University in Guangdong, founded in 1981, and says it had committed more than HK$6 billion to the university by 2013.^[11]

Political activity

During the 2019 Hong Kong protests Li paid for full-page advertisements in at least 15 newspapers calling for an end to violence.^[12] South China Morning Post noted the ambiguity of the advertisements, one of which cited a classical poem about "the melon of Huangtai", and reported that a related hashtag trended on Weibo before it was disabled.^[13] In September 2019, after Li urged those in power to "provide a way out" for young protesters, an official WeChat account of the Chinese Communist Party's political and legal affairs commission accused him of condoning crime and of causing the city's housing crisis. Li called the accusations "unwarranted".^[14]

Controversies and legal issues

For official Chinese criticism of his statements in 2019 and of CK Hutchison's 2025 ports deal, see above.^[14]^[8] No legal proceedings against Li personally were found in the sources checked.

International and political links

This section uses the same ten headings for every profile in this series. Only specific, sourced actions are included; company-level and foundation-level actions are labelled as such. Where nothing was found, the entry reads "No documented involvement found in sources checked."

Israel (investments, operations, donations, contracts, statements)

In September 2013, at a ceremony in Tel Aviv, the Li Ka Shing Foundation announced a US$130 million grant to the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The grant, which the foundation said was the largest the Technion had ever received, supported the Technion Guangdong Institute of Technology, a joint venture with Shantou University backed by the Guangdong provincial and Shantou municipal governments, and the Technion's campus in Haifa.^[11] No other links to Israeli state bodies or to pro-Israel organisations were found.