Victor Fung Kwok-king was born in Hong Kong on 16 October 1945 to a family from Heshan, Guangdong, and is the third-generation head of the family's Li & Fung group and chairman of the Fung Group. Educated at King George V School, he left for the United States in 1962, took a bachelor's degree in industrial management and a master's in electrical engineering at MIT, worked at Citibank in New York, and earned a doctorate in business economics at Harvard in 1970, where he then taught for three years. He returned to Hong Kong in 1974 to join the family trading firm and, with his brother William, transformed Li & Fung, founded in 1906, from a traditional trading house into a multinational sourcing group built on supply-chain management, using a 'dispersed production' model to coordinate sourcing and quality control for Western brands across a global network; he has also chaired Prudential Asia. In public life he chaired the Hong Kong Trade Development Council from 1991 to 2000, the Airport Authority from 1999 to 2008 and the University of Hong Kong council from 2001 to 2009, chaired the Greater Pearl River Delta Business Council, served as a member of the CPPCC and was a vice-chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce in 2007–08. He also served on the Hong Kong–United States Economic Cooperation Committee from 1988, was Hong Kong's representative on the APEC Business Advisory Council from 1996 to 2003, and sat on the Commission on Strategic Development and the Judicial Officers Recommendation Committee. He received the Gold Bauhinia Star in 2003 and the Grand Bauhinia Medal in 2010 and chairs the Asia Global Institute at HKU.
Victor Fung turned Li & Fung from a traditional trading house into a global supply-chain management business and long held key posts at the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, the Airport Authority and the University of Hong Kong council, making him a leading voice for Hong Kong business in international trade affairs.
Achievements
- 1974 · Returned to Hong Kong to join the family firm Li & Fung, which he later turned into a global supply-chain management group.
- 1991 · Became chairman of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, serving until 2000.
- 1999 · Became chairman of the Hong Kong Airport Authority, serving until 2008.