Sir Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong tycoon who built CK Hutchison, is ranked No. 42 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $47 billion. He retired as chairman in 2018 and remains a senior adviser to his companies.
Li Ka-shing was born on July 29, 1928, in Chao’an, Chaozhou, in Guangdong Province, to Teochew parents. His family fled to Hong Kong in 1940 as refugees from the Sino-Japanese war. After his father died of tuberculosis, he left school at 15 to work 16 hours a day at a plastics trading company.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 42, with $47 billion
- Reputation: despite his wealth he is known for a frugal lifestyle, wearing simple shoes and an inexpensive Seiko watch
Building the Empire
- 1950: he started his own company, Cheung Kong Industries, making plastics
- 1972: it became a leading Hong Kong property company and was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange
- 1979: through Cheung Kong he bought a major stake in Hutchison Whampoa from HSBC
- Retail: his group’s subsidiary AS Watson is a retailer with over 15,000 stores, including Watsons, Superdrug, Kruidvat and Marionnaud
Deals and Technology Investments
CK Hutchison builds businesses and sells them when it can create shareholder value. It made a profit of $15.12 billion in 1999 from selling Orange to Mannesmann, and $3.12 billion in 2006 from selling 20% of its ports business to PSA. Li’s venture firm Horizons Ventures invested in Summly in 2011, Zoom in 2015 and Impossible Foods in 2015, and the Li Ka Shing Foundation bought a 0.8% stake in Facebook.
Retirement and Giving
On March 16, 2018, Li announced his retirement and the handover of his roughly $100 billion empire to his son Victor Li. He owns the second-largest private foundation in the world after the Gates Foundation, according to Wikipedia. In 2006 Forbes gave him its first Malcolm S. Forbes Lifetime Achievement Award.
Why It Matters
Li’s companies span ports, retail, property and utilities across Asia and Europe, which makes him one of the most influential business figures in Hong Kong.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: Li Ka-shing (right) at a Stanford University School of Medicine event in September 2010. Photo: EdTech Stanford University School of Medicine / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
