Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠) has invested US$60 million in the popular US-based social networking Web site Facebook with a right to acquire another US$60 million stake, a report said yesterday.
Citing unnamed sources, the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital blog said Asia's richest man is not making the investment through his Hong Kong conglomerates -- Cheung Kong (Holding) Ltd (
In October, Microsoft bought a US$240 million stake in Facebook in a deal valuing the Web site at US$15 billion.
The report said the deal came through a Facebook investor, who introduced the company to Solina Chau (周凱旋), director of the Li Ka-shing Foundation and a major stockholder in Tom.com, a Chinese media company in which Li has an interest.
His investment could give Tom.com a leg up in possible partnerships with Facebook in China, the report added.
A spokeswoman for Hutchison Whampoa would not comment on the report.
The 79-year-old, whose fortune was valued at US$23 billion by Forbes, has investments across the world, including telecommunications, real estate, the Internet, shipping and retail.
Facebook is a social networking Web site that allows people to interact. Facebook has some 5 million members around the world and sees an average of 250,000 new users each day.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's decision to turn down offers to buy the Web site outright look to be paying dividends.
Zuckerberg claims to have rejected an offer from Yahoo Inc to purchase the Web site after the search giant reduced a verbal offer of US$1 billion to a firm offer of US$900,000.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure
RSS