Facebook gets $60M from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing
Facebook has gotten a new $60 million investment from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, in what could be move to get savvy help in China as the popular social network prowls for the best way to enter the hyper-competitive market.
Li Ka-shing (pictured here) was named ninth richest person in the world by Forbes, valued at $23 billion. Among his investments are Tom.com, a Chinese web company that could be a possible partner for Facebook in China.
The investment, first reported by AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, comes on top of Microsoft’s recent $240 million into the company at a very high $15 billion valuation. Details of the investment by the 79-year-old Li Ka-shing are few, and so it’s not clear whether he invested at the same value or not. As part of the Microsoft deal, Facebook agreed to an advertising relationship. Similar to that deal, Facebook may have made promises to Li Ka-shing or to one of his companies to compensate for that high valuation, though that’s speculation on our part.
Li Ka-shing is the chairman of Cheung Kong Holdings Limited and Hutchison Whampoa Limited, a large conglomerate with 250,000 employees. He is especially active in Hong Kong, where he has investments in telecommunications, real estate, electricity, retail, shipping and the internet. Recently, he’s started investing in Silicon Valley companies, backing the P2P internet television company, Joost, for example.
He also has the right to invest another $60 million in Facebook, according to Swisher.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
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