LI KA-SHING, Asia’s richest man, is restructuring his business empire to create two listed companies, one focusing on property industry and the other on telecom, retail and energy industries, in a bid to boost their value and attract more investors.

    The 86-year-old Hong Kong tycoon built his sprawling empire over more than half a century from a plastic flower business, but has been frustrated that his group’s listed companies trade at a discount to the book values of their net assets, a common feature of conglomerates.

    “This transaction is a watershed event in our group’s history. It is transformational from the point of view of shareholder value,” Li said in a statement Friday.

    Li’s two largest listed companies are Cheung Kong (Holdings) and Hutchison Whampoa, which both run a wide range of businesses. As Wednesday, Cheung Kong, which owns just under half of Hutchison Whampoa, traded at a 23 percent discount, or about HK$87 billion (US$11.22 billion), to its book value at the end of June 2014, the statement said.

    “The issue of holding company discount has puzzled us for a long time, until we thought of a way to resolve it during the second half of last year,” Victor Li, executive deputy chairman of Cheung Kong and Hutchison, told a news conference when asked why they chose to do the restructuring now.

    The proposed reorganization will put the property assets into a new company, Cheung Kong Property Holdings Ltd., with another, CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd., managing ports, telecom, retail, energy, aircraft leasing and other businesses. The transaction will increase transparency of the group and give investors direct shareholding in the two companies, the statement said.

    Some analysts said Li had timed the reorganization to tap growing interest in Hong Kong shares from mainland investors following a recent link-up that allows investors in Shanghai and Hong Kong to trade shares on each other’s bourses.

    (SD-Agencies)