Sir Ka-shing Li GBM KBE JP (Chinese: 李嘉誠; born 29 July 1928)[3][4][5][6] is a Hong Kong billionaire business magnate, investor, and philanthropist.

[11] Li invests in a wide array of industries, including transportation, real estate, financial services, retail, and energy and utilities.

[14] In spite of his wealth, Li has cultivated a reputation for leading a frugal no-frills lifestyle, and is known to wear simple black dress shoes and an inexpensive Seiko wristwatch.

[20] Owing to his father's death from tuberculosis, he was forced to leave school at the age of 15 and found a job in a plastics trading company where he worked 16 hours a day.

[23] In 1950, after learning how to operate a plant, Li founded a plastic manufacturing company in Hong Kong with personal savings and funds borrowed from relatives.

Li avidly read trade publications and business news before deciding to supply the world with high quality plastic flowers at low prices.

An opportunity to acquire more land arrived after the 1967 riots when many people fled Hong Kong, and, as a result, property prices plummeted.

During board meetings, Li stated on a number of occasions his goal of surpassing the Jardines-owned Hongkong Land as a leading developer.

The company implemented a cross-shareholding structure that was designed to place control in the hands of Britain's Keswick family despite their less than 10% holdings in the group.

[27] Li sold the Century Link complex in Shanghai for US$2.95 billion, the second largest transaction for a single building, according to the Financial Times.

[31] Some time between late 2009 and early 2010, Li Ka-shing led a US$15.5 million Series B round of financing for Siri Inc.[34] In 2011, Horizons Ventures invested in Summly, a website-summarizing app.

[35] In 2012, Horizons Ventures invested US$2.3 million in Wibbitz, a company that provides a text-to-video technology that can automatically convert any article post or feed on the web into a video in a matter of seconds.

[41] In September 2017, Li worked with Alibaba's Jack Ma to bring AlipayHK, a digital wallet service, to Hong Kong.

[citation needed] She was the daughter of his maternal uncle (mother's younger brother), Cheung Jing-on (1908–1996) and his wife, Hew Bik-yin (1911–2002), who were also from the Chaoshan region.

However, in recent years, tensions have been growing between Li and the mainland, especially with the rise of current China's paramount leader Xi Jinping.

[58] On 4 August 2011 at the interim results announcement for Hutchison Whampoa, Li endorsed Henry Tang for the forthcoming chief executive election.

"[23][62][63] However, Li was criticised by Chinese official state-run press agency Xinhua for being ambiguous in his opposition to the Umbrella movement protests and his support for Leung.

[64] Later, prior to the Legco vote, Li said that the largest threat to Hong Kong's future was if the government failed to ensure passage of the 2014–15 round of political reform.

Li came under attack from the Global Times newspaper in early 2015, when his companies put out word that it was considering selling prime Shanghai and Beijing properties.

[66] Concerted attacks ensued and went into a crescendo as China's economy slowed down dramatically in the second half of the year, and the central government sought a way to stem the capital outflows.