HONG KONG: Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li is back in the spotlight.

       The younger son of Li Ka-shing – the 93-year-old known in the city as “Superman” for his deal-making prowess -- is gaining ground as an accomplished investor of his own. His latest win: GoTo Group, the Indonesian tech giant that will start trading today.

       Tokopedia, the online-shopping startup that merged with ride-hailing company Gojek to create GoTo, is one of the junior Li’s first major bets in South-East Asia, a region he’s been targeting to diversify his empire.

       Li, 55, started backing the firm in 2017 and sat on its board until 2020. He unsuccessfully tried to combine Tokopedia with one of his blank-cheque companies before the deal with Gojek came along, giving rise to Indonesia’s biggest tech firm.

       Now GoTo has raised US$1.1bil (RM4.64bil) in one of the world’s largest initial public offerings (IPOs) this year. Based on its pricing, Li’s stake – owned via three vehicles – is worth US$900mil (RM3.79bil). That would take his net worth to about US$5bil (RM21.09bil), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Li, whose fortune is mostly based on Hong Kong assets, has been increasing his investments in South-East Asia in recent years. In 2019, his Hong Kong insurer, FWD Group Holdings Ltd, bought a Thai peer for US$3bil (RM12.65bil) and set up a 15-year life insurance distribution agreement with Vietnam’s largest lender. The following year, he agreed to acquire a 30% minority stake in PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia’s life insurer.

       He then teamed up with PayPal Holdings Inc co-founder Peter Thiel to establish a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) scouring opportunities in South-East Asia. He has since backed three SPACs focusing on the region, two of which have listed. One of them merged with Singaporean online real estate platform PropertyGuru Pte and started trading last month.

       Li also owns South-East Asia’s second-largest streaming service. Viu had more paid subscribers than Netflix Inc in the region last year, trailing only Disney Plus.

       By backing GoTo, the Hongkonger joined investors including Softbank Group Corp’s Vision Fund, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s Taobao China and Sequoia Capital India.

       He’s getting one of the biggest individual windfalls from the listing. His stake will be worth more than those of the company’s chief executive officer or its co-founders, according to Bloomberg calculations based on the IPO prospectus.

       The son of the man who for years was Hong Kong’s richest person, Li has had his share of blunders.

       After a brief stunt at his father’s ports-to-retail conglomerate, the Stanford University dropout broke away to build his own empire. Things started out wel. He sold a controlling stake of his first endeavour, media company Star TV, to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 1993 and founded Pacific Century Group, an investment firm with interests in areas from tech to media and financial services.

       But with the dotCom bubble burst, shares of PCCW Ltd, now its telecom and media business, began to slump. By 2009, the company had lost 99% of its market value, and when Li tried to buy it out a court ruled the plan had been manipulated. In 2005, he sold 20% of it to a state-owned firm now part of the China Unicom Group to cut down on debt after borrowing US$12bil (RM50.63bil) to fund PCCW’s purchase of Hong Kong’s then dominant phone company, Cable & Wireless HKT Ltd. — Bloomberg