Li Ka-shing fled mainland China for Hong Kong with his family in 1940, at age 12, to escape the Second Sino-Japanese War. Within a few years his father contracted tuberculosis and died, leaving the teenage Li as the sole provider for his mother and younger siblings. He dropped out of school for good and took a job at a plastics trading company, working shifts of 16 hours or more.
By 18 he had been promoted to factory manager. At 22, in 1950, he used his savings to found Cheung Kong Industries, a plastics manufacturing company, and grew it into one of the largest suppliers of plastic flowers in Asia — a product he'd learned to make from an Italian trade magazine.
Li used the profits from plastics to move into Hong Kong real estate in the 1960s, eventually building a conglomerate spanning ports, telecommunications, retail, and energy across dozens of countries. For years he was ranked as the richest person in Asia, with a fortune estimated today at more than $37 billion.
Ad space