李嘉誠

繁體中文

李嘉誠1928年生於廣東潮安，香港企業家、長江集團創辦人。1939年潮汕淪陷，他1940年隨家人徒步十多日逃難來港；1943年父親病逝後，十五歲便輟學，先後做過鐘錶學徒同五金廠、塑膠廠推銷員。1950年他以五萬元資本創辦長江塑膠廠，靠塑膠花打開歐美出口市場，1958年營業額達一千萬元，贏得「塑膠花大王」稱號。同年他購入工廠區地皮自建工業大廈，開始涉足地產；1971年成立長江地產，翌年長江實業上市，認購超額六十五倍。1979年他宣布向滙豐購入英資和記黃埔兩成二股權，成為首位控制英資洋行的華人，1981年《遠東經濟評論》以「李超人」做封面，從此成為他的代名詞。其後他收購香港電燈、加拿大赫斯基能源，1999年出售英國電訊公司Orange獲利逾一千一百億元，創下當時香港企業交易紀錄。2018年他宣布退休，轉任資深顧問，由長子李澤鉅接任主席；他創立的李嘉誠基金會亦係全球最大的華人慈善基金之一。

English

Li Ka-shing was born in 1928 in Chaozhou, Guangdong, and fled with his family to Hong Kong in 1940 after the fall of the Chaoshan region, walking for more than ten days. After his father died in 1943 he left school at fifteen, working as a watch apprentice and then as a salesman in metal and plastics factories. In 1950 he founded Cheung Kong Plastics with HK$50,000 and built it into an exporter of plastic flowers to Europe and America, reaching HK$10 million of turnover by 1958 and earning him the name 'King of Plastic Flowers'. The same year he bought industrial land and put up his own factory block, beginning his move into property; Cheung Kong Properties was formed in 1971 and Cheung Kong Holdings listed in 1972, its shares sixty-five times oversubscribed. In 1979 he announced the purchase of a 22.4% stake in the British hong Hutchison Whampoa from HSBC — the first Chinese businessman to control a British trading house — and in 1981 the Far Eastern Economic Review put 'Superman Li' on its cover, a nickname that stuck. He went on to buy Hongkong Electric and Canada's Husky Energy, and in 1999 the sale of the British mobile operator Orange to Mannesmann earned a profit of more than HK$110 billion, then a record for a Hong Kong company. He retired in 2018 as senior adviser, handing the chairmanship to his elder son Victor Li; the Li Ka Shing Foundation is among the world's largest Chinese philanthropic foundations.