Li Ka-shing invests 60 million dollars in Facebook
HONG KONG (AFP) — Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing has invested 60 million dollars in the popular US-based social networking website Facebook with a right to acquire another 60 million dollar stake, a report said Sunday.
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 and Hutchison Whampoa -- but another entity.
In October, Microsoft bought a 240-million-dollar stake in Facebook in a deal valuing the website at 15 billion dollars.
The report said the deal came through a Facebook investor, who introduced the company to Solina Chau, 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 23 billion dollars by Forbes, has investments across the world, including telecommunications, real estate, the Internet, shipping and retail.
Facebook and MySpace are fast-growing social networking websites that allow people to interact. Facebook has some five million members around the world and sees an average of 250,000 new users each day.
