HK’s Li buys UK rail firm for US$3.8b
Print Edition
HONG Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing’s Cheung Kong Infrastructure said yesterday that it had finalized the acquisition of Britain’s Eversholt Rail Group for 2.5 billion pounds (US$3.8 billion), as the tycoon’s business empire continued to expand offshore.
The purchase of one of Britain’s three main railway rolling stock companies follows an agreement last month which allowed Li to buy British telecom giant O2 for US$15.2 billion to expand his holdings in the global telecoms industry.
“CKI’s investment in UK’s rolling stock industry reflects the group’s strategy of embracing new growth opportunities through diversification and globalization,” the group said in a statement.
It said the purchase of the firm, which owns 28 percent of the UK’s passenger trains, marked a “new chapter in the development of CKI’s transport infrastructure business.”
The firm, which announced the Eversholt takeover in January, bought Canadian off-airport car park business Park’N Fly in July last year and acquired Australian gas distribution firm Envestra in October.
Eversholt owns some 3,500 passenger trains along with more than 80 freight locomotives and nearly 1,000 freight wagons. It was set up in 1994 in the privatization of British Rail.
The 86-year-old, worth US$35 billion according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, had been Asia’s richest man since 2012, but was surpassed by Jack Ma, the founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, in December last year.
Li, locally nicknamed “Superman”, unveiled a sweeping rearrangement of his business empire in January.
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