Learn with your ears

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HONG KONG : The oracle of Hong Kong has spoken. And his message: It's time to consider buying stocks and real;estate. Exuding confidence, Mr.
The proclamation Thursday by Li Ka-shing, the self-made billionaire who controls some of the largest Hong Kong companies and carries enormous sway among investors throughout Asia, was made at one of his rare public appearances.
Whether Mr. Li joked with reporters and looked anything but depressed about the sharp drop in profit his companies had reported;Thursday.
“If you have money in your pocket,” Mr. Li is proved right or wrong about stocks and property — and he certainly has a lot to gain personally if he is right — his comments come at a time when world stock markets have rallied on hopes that the economic slump may be bottoming;out. As for the property market in Hong Kong, he said, “history tells us that if you buy in a slow market, in the medium term you get good;returns. Li said, consider buying into stocks. Li repeatedly refused to say whether he thought the stock market had bottomed out.”
Mr.

Even though they were couched with caution, Mr. And he advised against borrowing to invest in what remains a shaky and volatile;environment.6 percent;Thursday. Li's comments echoed around the investment world and helped send the Hang Seng index up 3. Li is the man the local media dub “Superman” and is likened to Warren Buffett.
Mr.
And over the past year, as the economic crisis has dragged on and deepened, Mr. Considered one of Asia's most powerful men, he is also one of the continent's most generous;philanthropists. Thursday was the latest example of;that. Li has jumped in from time to time to try to restore confidence. Mr.
Last September, shortly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers had caused the world's financial system to convulse, savers in Hong Kong lined up outside the Bank of East Asia, one of the territory's best-known and biggest banks, amid rumors that the bank was in trouble.
And earlier this month, HSBC was trying to raise $18 billion in a rights offering, causing the bank's shares to plunge. . Many local residents own shares in the bank, which is now headquartered in Britain but has its roots in Hong;Kong.
When it appeared that the rights offering might falter, Mr. Li — along with several other Hong Kong tycoons — pledged to put about $300 million of his own money into the issue to help get it off the;ground.
Still, it has been a difficult year for Mr. Li, and the epithet of “Superman” sat a little awkwardly on him on Thursday after Cheung Kong Holdings and Hutchison Whampoa, the flagships of the property-to-ports-to-electricity conglomerate he controls, both reported declines in net profit of more than 40 percent for;2008.
Small wonder, given that the rapid slowdown in the global economy had tipped Hong Kong, along with the United States, Japan and others, into a painful recession and put a damper on the breakneck growth of neighboring;China.
Rental and property prices in the territory, a mainstay of the conglomerate's earnings, are expected to tumble further this year, hitting developers;hard.
But the Cheung Kong group is not just any Hong Kong company, and Mr. Li is not just any Hong Kong company;chairman.
The event Thursday was not just any annual news conference, but the pinnacle of the Hong Kong earnings season, complete with a boisterous and noisy media scrum that lent the bespectacled and affable Mr. Li the aura of a pop;star.
The complex network of companies Mr. Li controls — three of them listed on Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng index — epitomize the hustle and bustle of entrepreneurial Hong Kong and its roller-coaster;economy.
And Mr. Li himself boasts the kind of rags-to-riches history that every Hong Konger dreams;of.
The Cheung Kong group and its various interlinked companies grew out of the humblest beginnings imaginable: a plastic-flower manufacturing business the young Mr. Li set up in the;1950s.
Through them, five decades later, Mr. Li is now one of Hong Kong's leading developers of residential, commercial and industrial properties — about one in seven private residences here was developed by the;group.
Hutchison Whampoa, of which Mr. Li also is chairman, operates ports, hotels and supermarket and drugstore chains and is a major telecommunications operator in Hong Kong and;abroad.

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