Some people say that Wang Sicong does not care whether the other party has money or not, and he does not have money anyway. The same is true of Li Ka-shing, who once said that he did not care about the world's richest man anymore. Li Ka-shing's implication is that any of you can be the richest man in the world, but I don't have any money anyway.
The world's richest man today is Musk, but seeing Musk's current situation, do you think he is richer than Li Ka-shing? It is estimated that Musk's available wealth is not even one-tenth of Li Ka-shing's. Musk's book assets are $300 billion, ten times that of Li Ka-shing.
However, in fact, Musk's real assets are estimated to be even one-tenth of Li Ka-shing's. Musk recently cashed out $15 billion in Tesla stock in order to pay taxes. Paying taxes and cashing out stocks shows that Musk has no cash at all.
Tesla has been losing money for many years, and it has only just made a profit this year, so Tesla has not paid dividends before, and Musk has not taken the company's salary, so he once said that he did not have any fixed income. Musk is really miserable, he is the world's richest man last year to this year sold 4 houses, and now there is no house. Musk had dated his girlfriend before, and at one point he didn't even have money to eat, and he had to borrow money from his friends.
Because Tesla's market value has soared 10 times in the past year, Musk's net worth has skyrocketed. But is musk's $300 billion worth cashed out? The answer is definitely no. If Musk wants to cash out all of them, the first person or company that does not have such strength will take over the order at the same time.
The second Tesla's market value is overvalued, no professional institution will take over so many stocks at this price, Musk's only way to reduce holdings is to reduce their holdings in the capital market. If Musk continues to reduce his holdings, then it will cause Tesla's market value to fall sharply, then the money he finally got in his hand is not to say 300 billion US dollars, that is, 100 billion US dollars is not bad.
It took Bill Gates more than 20 years to reduce his stake in Microsoft. If Musk reduces his holdings in a short period of time, he will not find anyone to take over.
Look at Musk's current situation, and then compare it with Li Ka-shing's current situation, and you will know who is the real richest man. What is Li Ka-shing's main business, real estate, ports, telecommunications, electricity, energy, natural gas, oil and so on. What are the characteristics of these businesses, that is, heavy assets, a very long return on investment, and a very low valuation in the capital market.
Many rich people want to make a fortune, they have to use leverage, if there is no leverage, you rely on conscientious business, it is difficult to achieve overnight wealth. Of course, Li Ka-shing also had such a process of completing the original accumulation, that is, the Hong Kong real estate market from the 60s to the 80s.
In these 30 years, Li Ka-shing has gone from a small rich man to the world's richest man. Real estate is not the same as commercial real estate, commercial real estate is a heavy asset, but real estate is not. Real estate is a product similar to FMCG, where land is the raw material, construction is processing, and finally the house is the commodity. Real estate companies make the difference.
The problem is that real estate has financial properties again, so if you grasp the trend, it is possible that a project will make a lot of money. In the past 30 years, Li Ka-shing has grasped countless ups and downs of the big trend, successfully bought a large amount of land at the low tide, and sold a large number of houses at the high tide, and the profit in the middle is far higher than the normal profit. Of course, at that time, Li Ka-shing also took a lot of risks.
Now that the stage of primitive accumulation has passed, Li Ka-shing no longer needs to do so. What is Li Ka-shing's current thinking, that is, to operate conservatively and let his assets increase in value steadily.
However, in stability, Li Ka-shing has another cycle of operation. These businesses invested by Li Ka-shing are very stable, and they can have a stable income in both the economic upsurge. However, the valuation of these assets will also be affected by the economic cycle, so in addition to the operating income of the assets in the usual time, Li Ka-shing will also buy in the low tide period, and then sell the assets at the high tide to earn a huge difference. For example, Li Ka-shing sold the rabbit company in the UK that year and made a profit of more than 100 billion yuan, and Li Ka-shing is using the cycle of the telecommunications market.
Every industry has a cycle, the world is also a lot of different funds in the pursuit of different investments, some funds are the pursuit of interest maximization, then the risk is also the largest, some funds to pursue the risk of the smallest, then the interest is naturally relatively small. The problem is that Li Ka-shing can make a huge difference by taking advantage of the cycle operation.
After 30 years of primitive accumulation and 30 years of stable appreciation, it is difficult to imagine how much money Li Ka-shing has today. What's more, Li Ka-shing not only has a traditional business, he is also developing well in the field of science and technology. Recently, Li Ka-shing invested in a meta-universe company.
Every week, Li Ka-shing asks teachers to teach him a lesson to learn the world's most cutting-edge scientific and technological knowledge. Li Ka-shing is 92 years old, and he still maintains a strong fighting spirit and learning spirit, which is the key to his success. Li Ka-shing's Victoria Harbour Investment has invested in at least 100 companies around the world, from China to the United States to Europe, and there are Companies invested by Li Ka-shing everywhere, and all the funds of this investment company come from Li Ka-shing personally. This is even more powerful.
Li Ka-shing's stake in FACEBOOK alone is worth as much as 200 billion, and these are not counted in Li Ka-shing's personal shares, the key is that Li Ka-shing once revealed that investing in FACEBOOK is not his most profitable investment.
In 1996, Li Ka-shing's son, Li Zeju, was kidnapped by Zhang Ziqiang, and he came up with 1.038 billion yuan in cash in one day. To know what Li Ka-shing said at that time, Hong Kong can only mobilize 1 billion cash in a day, which means that these cash are all obtained by Li Ka-shing.
What is this concept, it's a cash bill, not a bank deposit number, or the money in your stock account. Let's say you have 10 billion cash in the bank, but if you go to the bank and get 1 billion cash, it's also difficult because there is not so much cash for you.
But Li Ka-shing can do it, and this alone is enough to prove the huge wealth of Li Ka-shing. Musk or Bezos, they are all stock rich, in fact, the strength is not to say that the world's richest, even the top ten richest people in the United States are difficult to rank in. The person in the United States who can really be compared with Li Ka-shing is actually Buffett.