Of course, one of the principal beneficiaries of the proposed project is rising tech-tycoon Richard Li.
HKT, denied reports that it is in talks with Richard Li about entering a consortium.
Now with Richard Li's PCCW emerging as a bidder the whole game has changed.
CNN: ASIANOW - Asiaweek | Intelligence | Business: Pick up the Pieces
Even Richard Li and his Pacific Century group seem slow off the mark in the Net world.
Richard Li is anyway reducing his 49% stake in Data Access to 24%, apparently after a reassessment of investment priorities.
Citing conflict of interest, Richard Li has pledged to resign his Hutchison Whampoa directorship if the HKT takeover goes through.
This is the atmosphere Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and Hong Kong businessman Richard Li want to replicate, in Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong, respectively.
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Richard Li's purchase of Hongkong Telecom (HKT), in which Li is thought to have played a key behind-the-scenes role, was criticized as making the clan too dominant in the local economy.
Of course, its too early to tell what Richard Li will make of HKT, and what impact the deal will have for the Internet in Asia he clearly wants to control.
Richard Li needs HKT for its half-a million ISP customers, for its fiber optic cables that circle every narrow Hong Kong alley and for some of its broadband ventures, like Star TV.
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He found his 32-year-old bride, Wendy Deng, there, but he has not made a bean out of the company since he bought it from Richard Li, son of a rich Hong Kong businessman, Li Ka-shing, in 1993.
The son of tycoon Li Ka-shing, Richard Li recently snatched HKT from the grasp of Singapore Telecom, a government-linked corporation, just as it was about to close a deal for a majority stake in Hong Kong's dominant telco.
By pushing back against the attempted PCCW buyout plans of Richard Li and probing the muck of Citic Pacific, the commission and its head Martin Wheatley (profiled in our Jan. 12 issue) have joined with longtime local reformers to start the ball rolling--if still uphill.
But during the flurry of dealmaking in late October, GigaMedia opted out after chairman Chester Koo could not agree with PCCW chairman Richard Li on which party would have the controlling stake a move seen by some as a rebuke to PCCW. The companies could tie up later, but GigaMedia's 30-year-old founder and CEO Raymond Chang may have the partner he needs in Star.
Richard's Dad, Li Ka-shing, owns Cheung Kong, which controls half of Hutchison Whampoa, which in turn owns Hutchison, Hong Kong's biggest cellular phone company.
CNN: ASIANOW - Asiaweek | Intelligence | Business: Pick up the Pieces
U.K. designers including Burberry's Christopher Bailey, Matthew Williamson, Giles Deacon and Richard Nicoll created dresses for the opening party, dressing the likes of Li Na (Deacon) and Ana Ivanovic (Williamson).
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